


Lonely Planet

by Blucifer



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Denial, Ensemble Cast, Growing Up Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Vomiting, discordant pining, getting the squad together, hookup culture, idiots to lovers, implied infidelity, love dodecahedron, that weird thing that happens in gay friend groups where everybody dates and fucks everybody else, two bottoms trying to make it work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:46:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27289621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blucifer/pseuds/Blucifer
Summary: "I like it more than onions." Hyunjin trusts himself to move now. Shallow at first, he gets used to the molten sensation of Changbin around him. "And it's way better than carrots. I like it more than eggplant. Beets. Spinach.""I'm so glad," Changbin meets him thrust for thrust. "I'm so fucking glad you like it more than salad."Even though he's never done this before, has no reference point beyond his own experiences, he knows. Changbin's smile and the soft noises that he makes let him know. He's doing this right.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Seo Changbin, Hwang Hyunjin/Park Jinyoung (GOT7), Hwang Hyunjin/Seo Changbin
Comments: 33
Kudos: 153





	Lonely Planet

_ The Lonely Planet: Present Day _

For a city of almost ten million people, there are sure as hell times that Seoul feels small. Changbin first realized this when he inadvertently outed himself to his sister. On a Friday night just like any other, he was out looking to find someone to dance with and then blow out in the parking structure. 

She was out at a bachelorette party at Seoul’s most infamous gay bar because its something safe and fun for girls in their mid twenties to do. When that happened, the idea of girls with glitter sashes and clip in veils seemed more threatening than harmless. 

Changbin’s realized it plenty of times since then, but it’s really hitting home  _ now,  _ a whole two years afterward. He’s a few years older now, but certainly not a bit wiser. 

He can’t remember too much about that night, or how many times their eyes met and awkwardly diverted across the dance floor, but he remembers that it was so stiflingly hot inside the club, and he feels that way  _ now  _ too. He’s wedged in the corner of a booth in one of the closed off reservation rooms in the back of their favorite hot pot restaurant staring at an empty seat across the table as chaos erupts around him. He’d better pour another glass of soju and join in before someone notices that he  _ isn’t  _ yelling, before someone asks him  _ what’s wrong _ . 

It’s an easy smile to put on. After all, Jisung, Felix, and Seungmin’s birthdays are absolutely worth celebrating. But, even though they’re celebrating those clowns’ birthdays, the attention isn’t on the birthday boys.

It’s on the guy sitting next to Jisung. His name is Jeongin, he’s Jisung’s friend, and they’re going to eat him alive. He’s tall, but not lanky. There’s a hint of muscle softened with a baby face, and he really doesn’t stand a chance. 

He’s cute, but that’s not what makes him special. What makes him special is that he knows one other person here, Han, which means…

Changbin scans the room sipping lychee soju as he does it. On Jeongin’s other side is Chan. Han of course, is scowling at Chan. Chan may have cleaned up his act as of late to  _ finally  _ cuff a certain Lee Felix, but Chan is  _ still _ Chan. Chan makes ember soft touches on Jeongin’s biceps and his chest. He makes sure that Jeongin’s cup stays full and that he gets good pieces of meat off the grill. Chan makes sure that he’s comfortable, and having a good time....And maybe he’s too attentive. 

But Jeongin probably doesn’t know that Chan and Han kind of used to be a thing. They wouldn’t admit to that themselves, but they totally were. 

Jeongin doesn’t know that Changbin’s own history with Chan and Han is quite complicated, but can be reduced down to two simple words, “failed throuple.” 

He doesn’t know that Han hatefucked Hyunjin as a hasty way of coping with that failed throuple. 

So he’s spared the tawdry stuff for now, and that’s fine. More than fine really, that’s why they want him so much. Their histories are enough to make any sane person balk and say, “ _ I need new friends.”  _ Because for now, Jeongin’s a fresh linen table cloth they’re just dying to wipe their greasy hands all over. 

But in some ways, it’s also kind of unfortunate. Because after learning all the horrible stuff about them, you also get to learn all of the good, and you can’t have one without the other. He doesn’t know that Seungmin, despite his prissy demeanor, trades his silk bow ties for ripped jeans in pursuit of a bassist in a band that burns up dirty little underground dives. Regularly drives across the city to pick them all up from the bars when they’re drunk out of their minds. 

He doesn’t know that Minho, despite his cold exterior, helped him through some of the hardest of times so far. Even back when they barely knew each other. 

He doesn’t know that Felix is one of the first people he ever told, and it wasn’t because he felt particularly close to Felix. Felix said something about getting a boyfriend, and Changbin outed himself right away. 

That is to say Jeongin doesn’t yet know that their little hodge-podge grop is flighty, occasionally selfish, absolutely incestuous, and hopelessly devoted to one another.

So yeah, Seoul, a city of ten million people feels real small. Cause by the time he’s twenty-three he feels like he’s got history with everybody, or know someone whose got history with the collective everybody. 

Nights spent up til 3 AM on Tinder only confirmed this. 

“ _ My friend Yeonjun is in your profile pic?”  _

_ “Oh yeah how do you know him”  _

_ “He blew me in the library during finals week, and now we study together all the time.”  _

_ Jaejoon has unmatched you.  _

Now repeat that shitty conversation over, and over, and over again until months become years. 

Seoul feels real small, but it just got one person bigger, and everyone’s noticed. 

So why the hell does Changbin feel even more caged in, and why does it  _ feel  _ like it has everything to do with the empty seat across the table? If the world is one person bigger, why does he miss the face he’s seen a thousand times or more?

Changbin nudges Felix with his knee, indicating that he needs Felix to nudge Seungmin with his knee, so that they can all spill out of the booth. 

“Hey man, what’s wrong?” 

“Need some air,” and it’s true. Dry electric heat of the hotplate combines with the steamy heat of the hotpot. So everything’s uncomfortable, and only made warmer by the free flow of alcohol, which he  _ keeps  _ sipping on despite the fact that his face feels uncomfortably red.

He leaves the room while Felix demands that Seungmin own up to all the horrible gifts he’s given, not just him, but the whole group over the years. Seungmin doesn’t have to own up to anything at all. 

Han’s too quick to volunteer the story of his twenty-first when Seungmin got him a single bath towel. 

He doesn’t have a story to contribute here. The worst thing that Seungmin’s ever given him was discounted Easter, purchased in April and hoarded until November for Pepero Day. It tasted mostly fine, so what did it matter?

So they all spill out. Changbin exits the little private backroom they reserved, and they’re so damn loud that their voices trail him even down the corridor of the restaurant and into the dining room. 

Suddenly, Seoul, maybe even the packed restaurant itself, feels cavernous. 

Hyunjin stands at the bar genuinely and effortlessly looking like something out of a glossy magazine ad. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone, revealing milky white skin and sharp clavicle bones. His skin glistens under the hanging modern lights like the perspiration is purposeful. He sips white wine with ice cubes in it from a long stemmed glass. Even though Hyunjin’s had just as much, if not  _ more  _ than Changbin has to drink, he doesn’t even look flush because of it.  _ Bastard.  _

“Hey,” Changbin says for a lack of anything better off the top of his mind.

“Hey yourself.” Automatically, Hyunjin kicks out the barstool next to him so that Changbin can sit. “Not in on the feeding frenzy, shark boy?” Because Changbin’s usually just as bad, if not worse than the rest, commanding attention from others and holding it tight. 

Changbin lets something like a laughing noise, dark and acerbic, into the silence between them. “Me?” It’s then that he notices the dampness in Hyunjin’s dyed blonde hair and feels the elastic pressure of a hair tie around his wrist. Hyunjin left approximately fifty thousand around his room, and he picks them up and absent mindedly slips them over his wrists for moments like right now. Moments like right now, when he can pull them up over his wrist with his teeth and offer it to Hyunjin. “He’s more your type anyway. I’m surprised.” 

Hyunjin accepts the hairband and ties his hair back in a messy ponytail. “My type? Do you even know me? Can you even call yourself my best friend if you don’t know my type?” 

Changbin tunes out what is one of tonight’s many manufactured meltdowns from Hyunjin, but his eyes stay trained on his friend. Stray hairs stick out in odd places, and it’s nice to see compared to the image of the cool, picturesque Hyunjin that makes drinking sugary wine with ice look stylish. This particular line of thinking rubs him the wrong way. Best to derail it completely. “Do you think you could beat a lie detector?” 

Hyunjin looks at him quizzically. 

“Those things measure how sweaty you are. I mean, you know, you sweat so much. It doesn’t really matter if you’re lying or telling the truth. You could murder someone, and the machine wouldn’t work.” his mouth curls into the kind of smile that he only gives when he’s being mean to someone that he loves very much. 

Hyunjin laughs and it makes his heart skip a beat. He’s always liked that. He’s  _ always  _ laughed at him, even when he knows he’s not funny. “No, I’d be innocent, but I’d end up in jail because of how much I was sweating.” 

Now Changbin’s laughing, because Hyunjin can always point out where the enormous holes are in his argument, but never makes him feel stupid for it. “No, but I can always tell when you’re lying. You’re lying to me now, and you’re gonna go to jail. 

“Jail?”

“Uh-horny jail.” 

“Horny jail? What, okay, you want me to say he’s cute? He’s cute. Just cute. Like puppies and miniature furniture cute, not  _ cute cute. _ ” Hyunjin traces an indecipherable pattern in the perspiration droplets on his glass for a moment before he speaks again. 

Changbin takes the wine glass from Hyunjin’s fingers and drains the rest of the wine, never mind the rapidly warming soju in his hand. His skin feels like it’s glowing now some radiant becon of stupid. “You guys weren’t  _ that  _ desperate when you met me right?”

“No of course not. We were way worse.”

* * *

_ The Lonely Planet: Two Years Ago  _

Changbin is Felix’s friend. He’s a frequent visitor to Felix’s English 101 tutoring sessions put on by the university. He’s nice so, try not to scare him away. 

That’s the story they all get in the group chat, so they all expect a squeaky clean school boy. What they get in real life is a demon who can’t shut up about sucking cock and looks like he could rip phone books. 

“No, you’re wrong. If you put a cock in your mouth, it’s a  _ blow job,”  _ Changbin insists. 

“Job implies a task, a task that can be  _ completed.”  _ Oh this is good, so good. He hasn’t seen Minho this drunk in so long, and to see him fully unleash his evil powers is  _ so  _ fucking good. “Sucking cock as a part of foreplay  _ isn’t  _ a blowjob. Next you’re going to tell me that a hot dog isn’t a sandwich, which would be stupid.” 

“It’s not a sandwich, and if that’s not a blow job, then what do you call it?” Changbin insists. Several cries of “Yeah,” echo out after him around the table.

“Unfinished!” Minho raises his voice and pounds his fists against the table. 

Rather than continue to give drunk Minho a platform, it’s only a matter of time before he starts ranting about how birds aren’t real, Chan changes the probably rehashing the great snow shovel caper of 2016. This leaves Changbin without a conversational partner. 

In that moment, Hyunjin realizes that he’s without too. And that’s really alright, cause he’d love to talk to muscle man over here. 

Muscle man strikes up the conversation for him. “I think your friend is trying to get me drunk,” Changbin confesses to him under his breath. Chan likes to play host, even when it’s not his event. So, he’s kept Changbin’s cup full and done his best to include him in every conversation. When Changbin confesses this to him, what is supposed to be a covert whisper turns into an awkward slur. 

Hyunjin can smell the peach soju on his breath. 

“I could help you with that.” His body slips forward, probably because he’s sweat through his clothes and turned the booth into a slip and slide. Real smooth Hwang. 

“I mean, I’m already kind of getting there,” Changbin punctuates the statement with a laugh. 

“No, what I mean,” Hyunjin plucks his empty cup from the table and flashes it to Hyunjin. Their waitress hasn’t been seen for at least twenty minutes. He really doesn’t blame her. They’re practically thumbless  _ animals. _ “Is that if you needed someone to take that off your hands...I’m looking out for you.” 

Changbin dumps his soju into Hyunjin’s empty cup, spilling it mostly across Hyunjin’s thumb. Yeah, that’s right. He has thumbs, but no one else does. Thumbed animal Hwang Hyunjin over here.

Then he clinks his empty cup against Hyunjin’s full one, spilling even more soju. 

“Cheers then.” 

“Salad.” Changbin responds. 

“What?” Hyunjin laughs. 

“You know, like what people in Spain say instead of  _ cheers.”  _

“You mean salud?” He laughs again because this guy is so funny without even trying. 

“No! I mean, like if we had croutons right now, we’d be set.” Changbin grabs the cup of soju, the one he just poured for Hyunjin, and gulps down the drink immediately. It’s like he expected, and wanted, to lessen the pain of whatever grief Hyunjin was gonna give him for such a shitty joke. 

But it never comes. Hyunjin laughs again and slaps his shoulder. “You’re so funny, oh my gosh.” His face is so red right now. Smooth. So smooth Hwang. 

And in that moment, he just kind of knows that it’s going to be very hard to make good on the promise they all  _ had  _ to make to Felix. “Be nice, don’t ruin his life with your dicks.” 

* * *

“Hyunjin tell me,” Minho purrs in his ear, bending sound so that he can  _ feel  _ what is said over the sound of the club without Minho full on yelling. “What are your opinions on the French Revolution?” 

“What the fuck Minho?” 

Minho draws a line with his purposeful gaze across the dance floor from Han to Changbin. “Le Petit Caporal,” in his drunken fervor, spittle flies from his mouth onto his face. 

“Fuck off Minho.” 

Minho slip slides back into his purring voice, as if he expected Hyunjin’s outburst, wanted to cause it even. “You know. Napoleon complex. Short man syndrome.” 

Hyunjin realizes something about himself, and he really doesn’t like it. Alright. Okay. Fine. Maybe Hyunjin likes them short and with something to prove. Maybe he likes them with a Napoleon complex. Because like, he doesn’t know him very well, but Changbin....Changbin. 

“Oh my god.” Hyunjin rebuffs the comment. “How could  _ you say something like that?”  _ Like Minho accused him of sleeping with his father or something...Let’s be real, he’s thought about seducing Minho’s father for the sole purpose of exacting revenge on whatever it is Minho’s done for him lately  _ multiple  _ times. “I’m gonna go dance, and then I’m gonna go fuck your dad.” Smooth Hwang. Real smooth. 

Yeah, so there’s some inherent sexual tension there between him and Han. Months worth of shit talking behind each others’ back. How could there not be? But it stays there. Tension. Because he never, ever wants to hear Han say, “I always knew you wanted my dick.” 

And Changbin? Changbin is brand new. There’s just his goofy smile, childlike laugh, and thighs strong enough to choke him out. Ugh, now that they’re not all crammed into one side of a booth, he can see just how tight his shirt is. Jacked. Really fucking jacked. Meatheads usually  _ don’t  _ know how to move. And if this is who Felix pulls out of tutoring sessions, Hyunjin is absolutely fluent in English. 

Changbin dances in the stilted, bad kind of way that only someone who can really dance, but doesn’t want to show it off, can dance. The dorky motions that he makes, lawn sprinkler, cabbage patch, all of it horrific, but linked together with buttery smooth transitions. It makes Hyunjin want to see what he can really do. 

Hyunjin drains his drink and cuts across the dance floor. Rolls his shoulders the way he practices it in front of the mirror and links hands with Changbin. It's hard to be sultry when yelling up over the noise of the club, but he gives it his best shot, “Changbin, we need to have a  _ body  _ conversation.” 

Changbin puffs out his chest and matches him step for step like he’s got something to say in response. And maybe, Minho, the bastard that he is, is right. He loves short cocky bastards. 

* * *

Changbin would say that Hyunjin wasn’t his type. He’s too lithe, and he’s too pretty, but that would be a lie. His type is  _ male.  _ Availability: flexible. 

Changbin would say that Hyunjin wasn’t his type, but when he approaches Changbin, grabs his hands, and draws him up close, it goes straight to his dick. Manhandling. Manhandling is his type. 

So Hyunjin fucking manhandles him out on the dance floor. In no time flat he can feel the searing heat of eyes on him. Probably Felix, and probably all of Felix’s friends. And he’s probably making such a fucking ass of himself, but that’s kind of hard to deal with when he’s had enough soju to sterilize his parents’ entire four bedroom penthouse. Hyunjin dances with him, and suddenly his drunk brain can’t fathom doing anything else. He’s so sweaty, and he’s so pretty. He  _ has  _ to take Hyunjin’s hands into his own and yank him downward so that they’re drunk face melding. Not kissing. It doesn’t really matter how shameful his behavior is when he’s got the softest, bubblegum-iest lips mashed against his. 

Like it’s almost cartoony how Hyunjin’s lips look. Like a beautiful fucking blow up doll came to life just to suck face with him. And his dick. God, it has to be perfect, because like, he  _ can feel it  _ through two layers of denim. Two words. Monster. Cock. 

He’s not really sure if Hyunjin offers...Or if  _ everyone  _ is too drunk and decides to call it a night. At some point he remembers standing near a subway station and ruffling Felix’s hair and calling him cute. Then the next minute, he was panicking about showing back up at his parent’s house shitfaced. 

So then they’re back at Hyunjin’s place, and they’re making out. And he’s waiting for Hyunjin to mirror what he did in the club and just  _ grab him  _ and push him down and fuck him. But that isn’t happening. So he’s alternating drunk and sloppy kisses with running the pad of his thumb across Hyunjin’s lower lips because holy fuck they’re just so pretty. So pretty that he dips his thumb inside of Hyunjin’s mouth, and it looks absolutely fucking filthy. 

Holy fuck. 

Okay, get it together Seo. He’s  _ got  _ to do something. Right okay. Hyunjin is so fucking sweaty. He really, probably needs to take some of these clothes off. So he tugs at Hyunjin’s crewneck, his belt, his pants and, then hastily takes off his own clothes. His hand brushes against Hyunjin as they both tentatively reach for their cocks. 

“Oops,” 

“Oh,” and then, “ _ oh, _ “ as fumbling melts into pleasure. 

“Oh my god you’re fucking huge.” Like, porn star big. Can’t walk straight big. “I cannot  _ wait  _ to have your dick inside of me where’s the--” 

“Huh?” Hyunjin lays back on the pillows, dewy with sweat and looks up at him with crazy, drunken eyes. 

Changbin looks back at him with equally crazy, equally drunken eyes. “Huh?” 

“Oh, I just thought you were gonna.” 

“Oh.” 

“Seriously?” You’re so muscley and you have short man complex and--” 

“Complex?” Changbin shouts in drunken incredulity, making Hyunjin’s point for him. “You bossed me around at the club. And your dick is huge. You mean you’re packing this thing around, and you don’t just--” He can’t believe it. Like he  _ can,  _ because it all makes a lot of sense actually. But right now, in his drunk, horny state he  _ can’t.  _ “So what do you like, wanna do?” Cause his dick is still really hard. And even though he’d rather get fucked right now, he’d also rather cum than have nothing happen at all. “Blow jobs? Rock paper scissors for who has to do it?” 

“Yeah, sure.” But Hyunjin’s voice sounds far away. “Could we um--” 

And, actually, his ember hot skin has turned clammy. His complexion, almost green. “You okay dude?” 

“Uh--” Hyunjin doesn’t so much answer as he pushes Changbin off of him, dives out of bed, and tears off towards the bathroom. 

Oh. Oh. This is the guy in the friend group that Felix lovingly refers to as Hurling Hwang. Carsickness, nights out, and a penchant for food poisoning. 

Hyunjin interrupts this particular line of thought with a loud retch from the next room. 

Poor guy. Changbin’s boner shrinks at the sound, which allows blood to flow back to his brain, and think about what he  _ should do.  _ Okay. Water. Drunk people need water. This drunk person, and that drunk person throwing up in the bathroom need water. 

Changbin buttons his pants, and nearly falls out of bed in the process. Then, he staggers out into the kitchenette in search of a clean glass. Finding it, he pounds a glass of water himself. Then, he pours another and sets it on the counter for Hyunjin. 

What else do drunk people need? Oh, something to settle their stomach. Changbin finds some ramen in the pantry, but a lot of it is spicy, and he’s pretty sure Hyunjin needs the opposite right now. He finds some weird, kind of prissy tea biscuits. Changbin crams half the sleeve into his mouth over the next few minutes as he waits for Hyunjin to emerge from the bathroom. 

The retching stops. Changbin can hear the pipes groan as the shower turns on and then a loud crash. Okay, he should really stop eating these biscuits so Hyunjin has something. He sets about finding a pan or something so he can make the forbidden spicy ramen. 

Waiting for the water to boil, Changbin pokes around. He reads the notes on the fridge, and looks at the books on Hynjin’s shelf. This place looks like something pulled from a pinterest moodboard. It’s  _ so  _ much nicer than any other guy’s apartment he’s ever been in before. 

And after what feels like an eternity, Hyunjin emerges from the bathroom towel draped around his shoulders, limp dick swinging. “Oh, you’re still here.” 

“Uh yeah. I wasn’t gonna just leave you like that bro.” 

Hyunjin comes into the kitchenette and knocks over the packet of biscuits, and several dishes in the drainer. 

“Here I got you some water,” but as he’s reaching for it Changbin drunkenly knocks it over. “Seriously?” he groans in annoyance. 

“Do you wanna like sleep here tonight? You said you couldn’t go home this drunk.” Hyunjin finds a sleep shirt and pulls it on over his head. No underwear. He eats biscuits in bed and lets the crumbs fall everywhere. 

Changbin foolishly joins him with a bowl full of spicy broth. 

“Oh my god thank you so much, my mom would kill me.” 

“If you spill that in my bed. I’ll kill you. Also, your face is gonna be soooo bloated tomorrow,” 

“You literally vomited mid hookup. You’re going to be so dehydrated.” 

“They call me Hurling Hwang,” and he shoots Changbin with finger guns. 

“Yeah I know. Felix told me.” 

“Felix,” Hyunjin scoffs. “Ugh, you probably hate me so much. Which is a shame because you seem cool.” 

“Nah,” Changbin responds. Somehow, he manages to turn the light off and snuggle up next to Hyunjin in bed. “I still think you’re cool.” 

“Cool.” 

When it’s finally time to go to bed, they fit together really well, even though someone as wide as he is, and someone as tall as Hyunjin is, shouldn’t on a narrow twin bed. But they do. 

* * *

Hyunjin wakes up, hangover sweat amplified by a densely packed furnace sleeping next to him. The sense of dread that accompanies a night of thorough debauchery creeps up, not unlike all those cocktails, in his throat and settles in an impossible to swallow lump. 

What the fuck?

The only explanation is that the high amount of alcohol fragmented his brain. And those fragments of his brain rattle loosely in his skull, causing  _ so much  _ discomfort when he rises reaching for the glass of water one of them was smart enough to leave out last night. 

With a wobbly grasp, Hyunjin clutches the glass and... _ fuck.  _ Spills a little water on the sleeping boy next to him. Poor Changbin. 

Poor Hyunjin really. Felix is gonna give him such an earful for scaring him away from the group...Usually its Minho’s job to scare off new-comers. 

“Fuck.” 

But Changbin takes it in stride. He opens his eyes slowly, bats impossibly long lashes at him, and rises. His face is not bloated. There are no dark circles underneath his eyes. It’s like he's a drunk Sleeping Beauty blessed by the club fairy. 

In that moment, Hyunjin kind of hates him. Kind of never wants to see the fresh faced boy he interrupted mid-hookup to vomit ever again. 

“Hey.” Changbin smiles at him. “You okay drunkie?” Gone is the gruff almost commanding voice that shot straight to his dick last night. His tone is soft, almost infantile. 

“I’m fine.” It’s kind of a lie. He’s gonna lay in bed and nap until at least one or two this afternoon and then order takeout when his stomach stops churning. It’s what he deserves. 

“You wanna start over?” Changbin asks him sweetly. “Never gonna mention it again. Ever.” 

Hyunjin would much rather prefer that they never see each other ever again, but he’d say almost anything to end the suffering, either interpersonally or physically. “Sure.” 

“Okay. Hi. I’m Seo Changbin. I’m twenty-one. I study business, but I’m not very good at it. Nice to meet you,” he says offering his hand to Hyunjin. 

“Oh uh,” his mind feels like static worms right now, and he’s really not here for any of this. “I’m uh. I’m Hwang Hyunjin. I’m twenty. I study interior design. I’m really good at it.” And he grasps Changbin’s hand in his own as he shakes it. “Nice to meet you too.” 

* * *

Hyunjin’s brilliant plan to never see Changbin ever again (see: do nothing, understand that his lack of control over his bodily fluids is more than enough to scare people away) isn’t effective. Not in the slightest. He doesn’t even get that nice cool down period, because no less than twelve hours  _ after  _ Changbin kisses him on the cheek and flees his apartment with perfect skin and no hangover, he’s  _ back.  _

When there’s a knock on the door, and he yells into the main room, “it’s open!” he doesn’t think much of hearing Chan’s voice, soft and low, speaking to another person. Sometimes he picks up Minho on his way over. 

Not until he remembers that it’s  _ Saturday _ and one these nights Minho usually shows up a little later, after he’s closed down the store. That means Chan’s brought someone else with him….Someone else to Hyung Hangover Nights, and Changbin  _ was  _ a little older than him officially making him eligible for…Cool. No really. Cool. Totally cool. Completely cool. The coldest. 

Hyunjin wipes down the mirror he’d spritzed with acrid blue ammonia and looks at his reflection. Alright Hwang. No big deal. He seemed really cool about it. So Hyunjin takes off his hairband, smoothes down any flyaways, and faces the evening. 

“So we’re not going out again tonight?” Changbin asks. He’s sitting on the countertop inbetween the microwave and the rice cooker. 

“God no,” Chan’s standing at the stove, stirring something in a pot. Maybe instant kimchi-jjigae, or seaweed soup. Something quick, and something easy. There’s another few plastic shopping bags on the counter because instant or takeout is  _ required  _ for optimal recovery on nights such as this. “All of this started as like a thing when Felix and Han first turned 19 and could start going out with us. They’re insane. Like they go so hard. Sometimes we just wanted to sit around and watch dramas and eat and not feel like death. So we started lying and saying  _ we  _ were gonna go out just the three of us like old times. Except, we don’t.” Chan takes the spoon from the pot, blows on it softly, cups his hand underneath and offers it to Changbin. Changbin lets Chan feed him. 

“Felix and Jisung are probably, definitely, out right now.” 

“Maybe I should go out with them instead of staying in with you old ladies.” But Changbin’s looking at Chan with sparkling wide eyes like he’s the only person on earth. Chan’s good at that, making you feel special. No wonder it works on Changbin right away. 

Holy fuck there’s so much fucking minutea here. He hates it  _ so  _ much, but he’s so grateful Minho isn’t here yet to pick it all apart and force him to analyze it. 

“We watch a lot of trash tv,” Hyunjin interjects. “Right now we’re really into Thai BL dramas. Did you get me any hotbar?” Hyunjin starts rummaging through the bags of snacks and convenience food. 

“Spicy,” Changbin interjects. 

He’s pretty sure Changbin’s talking about pg rated scenes of men  _ almost  _ kissing on screen, but paranoia sets in. “Not pepperjack right?” 

“Never pepperjack,” Chan responds. “Nothing spicer than a glass of milk for you Hyunjin.” 

Hyunjin rifles through the snacks finding the vacuum sealed package at the bottom. He tears open the package with his teeth and spits the torn part of the wrapper back into the bag. “Are you eating dry soup mix?” He asks Changbin. 

Changbin holds a scorched rice soup packet in hand and empties the contents into his mouth. “They were out of the snack kind,” he explains crunching loudly. “Hyunjin, your apartment is really nice by the way.” 

None of them make enough money for anything above a shitty student’s studio, but Hyunjin is resourceful, and what kind of aspiring interior designer would he be if he lived in one of the thousands of desolate bachelor pads throughout Seoul? 

He found, and begged Chan to help him haul back to his place, a bunch of bookcases that the university was throwing out. He uses them as a divider wall so it  _ looks  _ like he has a bedroom separate from his livingroom and kitchen area. He literally took on a temp job handing out fliers for shitty new restaurants that opened in trendy districts so he could afford his sofa. So what if it’s Ikea. Unlike  _ most  _ of his friends’ apartments, they actually have somewhere to sit. 

“Thanks, I’m like obsessed. Chan helped me find and paint those shelves. I made the rug.” 

“You made it?” Changbin’s smile lights up, and Chan just takes the two of them in, like he doesn’t really know what to think. 

So much minutiae. 

“Yeah.” 

It doesn’t get much better when Minho shows up with a few cheap bottles of prosecco and a carton of ice cream and its time to watch television until their brains are rotten and oozing out their ears. It’s usually just the three of them, and they fit snugly, but comfortably across the sofa. Now, there’s all kinds of weird readjustments to their unassigned assigned seating. 

Minho willingly grabs some pillows off of his bed and flops down on the floor. As if he’s aware of  _ everything  _ that's happening and wants to observe. So Changbin sits on the sofa between Hyunjin and Chan, and it’s all sorts of weird, because Chan usually sits between him and Minho. 

Changbin wriggles between them first resting his chin on Hyunjin’s shoulder and then curling up onto Chan as their binging progresses. 

At some point, the bubbles make everyone warm. The twists and turns in the drama become predictable, and there’s only one thing left to do tonight. Act really stupid in front of each other. 

“Never have I ever…” Minho looks at the three of them as if he’s carefully considering the most impactful option. “Kissed a girl.” 

He and Chan  _ both  _ put one finger down. 

Changbin looks at him with surprise. “Really Hyunjin?” Minho too looks surprised, like he said it purposefully just to get closer to getting Chan out. 

“Yeah,” Hyunjin admits. “I’ll do you one better. Never have I ever.” He looks about mischievously as if he should  _ really  _ say it. “Topped someone before.” 

And he watches in awe as three fingers go down, and three hands descend upon him in light slaps and pinches in disappointment. 

Changbin too. 

“My turn, right?” Chan asks with a wiley grin on his face. “Never have I ever...Had more than one partner in less than 24 hours.” 

“Oh my god you said you’d never tell!” Minho wails. Everyone laughs. 

* * *

As much as he dislikes the idea of sex with Hyunjin happening  _ without  _ sitting on his enormous cock, he hates the idea of never fucking him more. 

And like, is there a better aphrodisiac than shared trauma? 

And if the night they met wasn’t good enough, tonight is really gonna seal the deal. 

Minho invited him to his performing arts tperformance, and like, the rule is, if you can, you show the fuck up. Changbin doesn’t question their love for him, but he also knows that aside from Chan and Han, they don’t really like the smoky grimy open mic shit. They hate events at the stuffy, uptown gallery that Hyunjin works at (apparently, he hasn’t gone to one yet). But they go. 

So that begs two questions. One. Where the fuck are those other fuckers? Changbin taps on his phone and sees a notification from Chan, “oh I was gonna stop in later,” and one from Han, “yeah, Minho played you all. He told me not to come because this one’s bad.” 

Changbin flashes his phone to Hyunjin, because he knows he isn’t texting Han of all people right now. 

Hyunjin trades him and flashes his phone at Changbin. A text from Felix reads, “yeah, actually Han told me Minho told him not to go.” 

They both roll their eyes in exasperation at one another. 

“In the year 2016, a year not so distant from now, members of the opposition party in parliament made history by making a statement,” The woman who recites this introduction stands before the crowd in a traditional Hanbok. She wears white clown makeup and a bright red nose. “A 196 filibuster on the floor. We now will restate that statement.” 

A flashbang goes off. Dancers in the background, he spots Minho among them. A man steps forward and then begins reciting all that drivel that was said all of those years ago, blocking a law that doesn’t really affect any of them. 

“I think we should ditch.” Hyunjin taps out on his phone.

Changbin begins a response before Hyunjin finishes and shows him the screen. “It’s not ditching completely if you actually show.” 

“I like the way you think.” 

“It’s 50 won beer night at BlueBird,” Changbin’s trying to figure out how he’s going to get out of this aisle without tripping over at least three people. The answer is that he’s not. 

“I really like the way you think.” 

At the bar, Changbin acts like someone he’s not. He leverages muscle to push through the crowd and get them beers. Even though Hyunjin’s a head taller than him, he uses his strength to pull Hyunjin up into the tall bar booth and holds him close. Usually? He won’t even whip out his black card when he’s with a guy for the first time. 

They’re holding hands underneath the table. Hyunjin’s rings pinch his skin, and Changbin ignores the sensation because Hyunjin feels so warm and so right. 

“I really like  _ you _ .” 

Hyunjin looks at him with hungry fond eyes and wets his lips with the tip of his tongue like he feels the same way. But the press of soft lips against his own never come. But, as if to soothe the very burn that he caused, Hyunjin responds, “I like you too.” 

* * *

Hyunjin is a hyung to some and an advisor to none and he likes it that way. Too bad Changbin crashed into their lives and ruined that for him. In the group, as far as big brotherly roles go, Chan’s got it mostly covered. Wear a condom. Stagger your drinks with water when out. And it’s nice, even if he’s totally, totally angling to be one of those guys that gets called daddy even though he’s only twenty-three. 

And if Chan’s tapped, or more likely, Chan’s thinking almost exclusively with his cock...his big, stupid cock, Minho will take over with a dagger tipped stare and a sigh of reluctance, and everything works out. 

Although he’s older than Felix and Han, they never really ask him for advice. After all, he’s only older by a few months. Felix is quite literally in love with Chan, so he goes to him first, and Han is the most annoying human on earth who just so happens to be attached to Minho’s hip. 

And honestly, in moments like this, he’s so fucking glad that he’s only hyung to some. Because like….Hyunjin runs his hands through his hair grimaces at just how wet his hand is. 

There’s no way he was ever this bad to Minho or Chan when he was figuring this shit out. No way. 

At this moment, his brain elects to remember the time he drank enough pina coladas to kill a lesser man and subsequently vomited all over Chan’s new pair of oreo Yeezy’s and pulled Minho’s towel bar out of the drywall. 

Okay, maybe this is exactly what he deserves. 

The question still remains, why  _ him?  _ This is probably the kind of thing Chan would secretly love. Why  _ him,  _ when Changbin has had a whole extra year of life get it together? 

The answer hangs over Hyunjin like the drizzling gray clouds that slick down the city. It has more to do with the lost puppy-dog look in Changbin’s eyes than he’d like to admit. 

Hyunjin supposes he has all the time in the world to feel sorry for himself and really needs to focus on the task at hand. Unlocking his phone to find the keycode to Changbin’s building, he scrolls past massage of, “it’s stuck” 

And his response, “what do you mean it’s stuck?” 

And Changbin’s panicked, “what do you mean what do you mean it’s stuck?” 

Hyunjin enters the building code  _ and still  _ gets side eyed by a doorman. Changbin lives in the kind of place that explains, just within a few seconds of being there, where all the hard to find streetwear comes from. 

Hyunjin knocks on the door, and  _ holy fuck what if his mom answers the door?  _

For both his own and Changbin’s sake, she doesn’t. It’s Changbin, wearing nothing more than gray sweats, an old tee, and a blush that explains everything. 

It would be cute, if he didn’t know just how miserable he was. 

“Hey.” 

“Hey.” Hyunjin puts on his best hyung face. His best “I really know what I’m doing,” face. Changbin won’t see through, not because he’s good, but because Changbin is so painfully unobservant. 

They walk back into Changbin’s room in tense silence. Hyunjin tries not to stare at the lavish decor around him, marble, and crystal, and he didn’t know that ceilings could be so tall, but that means he focuses on Changbin’s ass. Changbin’s ass and knowing what’s in there. 

Decour it is then. 

“So what the fuck should I do?” Changbin starts talking before the door to his room is even shut. 

“Is this how big it is?” Hyunjin picks up some discarded packaging in the small trash can near Changbin’s desk. He’s….not not impressed. 

“Does that matter?” 

“Um,” Hyunjin audibly clears his throat. “Okay, um,” fuck. “I’m trying to think. I had an incident with a princess plug once. Uh, you can still feel the base right.” 

“Yes of course I can still feel the base,” Changbin hisses. 

“Okay,” and that does make him feel a little less tense. “You're just tense. I think we should try what I tried.” 

“Yeah, which was?” 

“Relax a little bit. You know. We’ll put on one of the worst Netflix rom coms we can find. And then you know, when it’s off your mind... you’re nice and relaxed. Try again.” 

“That’s your answer?” 

Hyunjin nods. 

Changbin picks up his remote from the night stand and sits on the bed gingerly. “Okay, my sister said  _ Velvet Prince _ was pretty bad. I guess we could try that.” 

Hyunjin climbs into bed with him. Changbin is a serial cuddler. He doesn’t know how appropriate that is or  _ isn’t  _ right now. He just feels like if he got a giant plug stuck in his ass, he’d like a friend to like. Hold him. So he drapes his arm around Changbin’s shoulder. 

Changbin takes this as an invitation, moving into the space underneath Hyunjin’s arm. 

“That’s it?” because he kind of can’t believe someone’s following his advice. He never gives it after all. 

“I mean. I’m probably not gonna be able to forget about it. Or like, completely calm down or whatever, but,” Changbin trails off and traces patterns in his soft, expensive feeling bedspread. “I do feel better now that you’re here. It  _ could  _ work. And honestly I,” Changbin lets out a long sigh. “I would probably do anything to not sneak off and ride public transportation to the hospital with this thing stuck inside of me” 

“Ask your mom for a ride?” Hyunjin teases. 

“That’s not funny,” Changbin slaps him. Too hard to be a play slap, too light to really actually count as friend on friend violence. 

They start talking over the movie right away. “Oh my god, you missed it today. Han dared Chan that he could scale the chain link fence by the high school faster and Chan hurt his pectoral.” 

“He sprained his titty?” Hyunjin asks. 

“Bruised his breast.”

Changbin is warm. Like, campfire warm. He’s gonna make him start sweating, and like, it doesn’t really  _ matter.  _ He could probably show up smelling like skunk and rotten milk and Changbin would still want him here, at least, in this situation. 

“Hyunjin, can I just say something?” 

“Speech. Speech.” 

“I was literally lubing that thing up wondering if I should’ve bought a fleshlight instead.” 

“No way.” 

“Way. Like I spent, a crapton of time looking at those and other pocket pussy--That’s not right. Pocket ass--Sleeves. Cock sleeves.” 

“Wait, did you ever see Han’s? It’s the avatar one.” 

“Like, last airbender or..” 

“No, it’s blue dude.” How could he have not seen it? He and Han aren’t even that close and he’s seen it. 

“Oh my god.” 

And when they’re all caught up in only the way that two people who spend almost all of their time together can be, they’re forced to really watch the shitty movie that they’ve chosen. 

Or...not.

Because the next thing he knows, furnace Bin is cuddled up even closer to him. Hyunjin finds that the best place for his hand is resting on Changbin’s waist. Then Changbin’s mumbling something in his cutesy voice, something about, “just a little one. Just because this movie sucks.” 

Then they’re kissing. And...it’s not like he hasn’t kissed Changbin before. Its just that, he spent a decent amount of time lying to himself. Lying about how he couldn’t keep doing this, and it wasn’t really right, and  _ yes.  _ It is that good. 

Changbin’s lips are really full, and he kisses Hyunjin like every conversation that they’ve ever had about they’re preferences is a lie. He kisses him like he wants to fuck, and he wants Hyunjin to know. He’s hard, and he’s bruising, and he bites his lower lip until it’s fat, and it’s red. 

But he also kisses Hyunjin like every conversation that they’ve ever had about preference is absolutely the truth. Changbin is rough, but only in hopes that he’ll be rougher. Changbin laps, and probes, and takes, only in hopes of being taken. 

“What?” Hyunjin asks when they finally part with a smack. 

“I don’t know. Seemed like the right thing to do.” 

“Yeah?” Minho asked him to hold his ass before he took the graduate entrance exam, so it’s like whatever. Maybe it will be good for Changbin. That’s what he tells himself. He’ll get a little turned on and then it will just  _ sl-ide  _ right out. That’s what he tells himself when he kisses Changbin again. It’s about helping out a friend, not chasing those little whimper noises that Changbin makes. 

He likes Changbin a lot, he just wishes he weren’t so goddamn stupid. Or...well...smarter with this kind of stuff. Because he knows that Changbin is smart, it just seems that when it comes to stuff like this he’s determined to crash and burn. Hyunjin tries to tell him this when he kisses him, urgently, with all that is on his mind. 

It goes back and forth like that for a while. Stolen kisses destruct by silver spit strand tripwires. Then comes the part where they  _ would. _ But instead there’s awkward spaces in between. Places where one of them would move forward if either of them were the kind of person to do that. Spaces where they simply grab, and squeeze, and look at one another expectantly. 

“Do you think I should try?” Changbin interrupts. “I feel really...relaxed. Sort of.” 

“No, yeah,” for a minute Hyunjin forgot that’s  _ kind  _ of why he came over. So Changbin leaves, and then he’s alone. Hyunjin can hear a door slam down the hallway. He’s alone, tipsy, in his friend’s bed with the world’s worst netflix original left on in the background. 

Something close to, but ultimately a few seconds shy of an eternity passes in Changbin’s room. It’s weird how his place is so nice, but he’s never been here before. They usually end up back at his apartment, which is nice enough, but cramped and screams  _ student.  _ It’s funny, the very idea that Changbin might be more comfortable there than he is here.

Hyunjin is hard. It’s something that he can’t quite escape now that he’s essentially trapped in his friend’s room. 

Hyunjjin can hear the pipes groan. Changbin must be showering.

If he thinks about it, the whole thing is kind of sexy. 

Hyunjin adjusts his dick in his pants. One of his skills has always been to really put it all out there. Elegantly. “What the fu-uck.” 

In a lot of ways, it’s nothing less than something that Changbin would probably rather forget. Hyunjin should remember that. 

Changbin returns from the shower a changed man. Gone is the faint blush that dusted his cheeks. Back is the 1000% bullshit swagger that he loves to wield. 

It isn’t lost on Hyunjin though, the way he awkwardly bundles up his dirty clothes, hiding the sex toy underneath and shoving the whole thing into his hamper. He’s got a towel loosely tucked around his waist. 

Changbin slings himself back into bed. They don’t touch. They don’t kiss. The time for that has passed. Next drunk. Next crisis. Next vulnerable. 

“Hey.” 

“Hey.” 

“Thanks, for uh-” 

Yeah...He really can’t keep doing this. “Can you promise me something Binnie?” 

“Yeah. I mean. Probably.” 

“Remember to get that thing out of your laundry basket. You know. Before your mom does the laundry.” 

* * *

He’s out shopping with his mom when she drags him into one of the fancy restaurants lining the shopping district for “an appetizer.” Last time he checked, chardonnay didn’t count as a meal, but he’s totally okay with it if she’s buying. He’s inhaling tapas when he sees the wildest fucking thing he’s ever seen in his twenty-one whole years of living. 

Swear to god, that’s Hurlin Hwang Hyunjin sitting at the bar looking really fucking fine. 

Like, Hyunjin’s always really well put together, but he’s never struck him as a Pairing Room at two in the afternoon just because _ ,  _ kind of a guy.

That’s when it all makes sense. Hyunjin’s talking emphatically to this clean cut, slightly older, absolutely model looking guy. He wonders if it’s  _ like that.  _

His heart drops at the fucking thought, but it doesn’t stop him from rubbernecking like a balloon animal. 

It’s so bad that his mom tells him to stop staring. 

Changbin doesn’t listen, at the risk of his mother  _ not  _ buying him the absolutely, needlessly loud, Off-White belt that he really wants. 

Changbin watches, and he sees them turn into each other at the bar. Hyunjin’s leg rests inside of his, propping his foot up on the other man’s barstool. They hold eyes like they wanna fuck each other or...maybe they’ve fucked before. Hyunjin briefly, fleetingly touches his chest in a way that edges the line between appropriate and inappropriate. Oh it's  _ absolutely like that _ . What the fuck? Has Hyunjin had a boyfriend this whole time? 

Sure, Hyunjin doesn’t really owe him  _ shit,  _ but like...Changbin pulls out his phone and texts Hyunjin, “what the fuck!” 

And he watches in real time as Hyunjin pulls out his phone, looks at his screen, and taps “ _????”  _ in response. 

“I’m at the Pairing Room rn. Mom took me shopping. Needed to stop for some lunch,” and he punctuates the text with a line full of wine glass emoji’s. “To your left.” 

Changbin watches, with a few second delay, as Hyunjin looks at the message, turns, looks around, and meets and returns his pained wave. 

“He has to go soon. You can come over and help finish this wine if you want.” 

As if on cue, a few minutes later, the other man rises. He’s taller than Hyunjin. They hug like two people who aren’t hyper concerned that they have a big purple neon sign that says “GAY” pointing right at them. Changbin wonders if he will ever allow himself that level of effortlessness. 

“Ma, my friend from…” Where is Hyunjin a friend from when he can’t tell the truth? “From school is over there. I’m gonna go say hi.” 

“Who is that?” Changbin asks poking Hyunjin in the arm. The action assumes closeness, intimacy, something that they’ve had a lot of. Now it feels strange. 

“That’s Jinyoung. He’s um,” Hyunjin takes the perspiring stemmed water glass between his fingers. They’re twins, Hyunjin and the sweating glass. He sips gingerly. “You know.” 

“Ah,” Neat. “Wait, he looks older than us. Last week you told me that _ I  _ couldn’t go home with that guy at the bar who--” 

“Jinyoung is like five years older than me. That guy was clearly in his forties, Changbin.” 

Changbin feels like he can hear the gears in his own head turning. When--” And he sort of waves his hand in a way that’s sort of supposed to ask the question for him. 

“What? That’s not a real question.” 

“Well, we just like…” Changbin looks at him quizzically. 

“Yeah,” Hyunjin edges the expensive bottle of wine towards him. “You should have some of this. He got the bottle to share but--” 

“You hate red though Hyunjin.” 

“I guess it’s like fancy or something.” Hyunjin looks away and doesn’t answer the question that Changbin never bothered to properly ask. 

“Oh,” Changbin doesn’t want the wine. He doesn’t really  _ like  _ wine. Even though they weren’t offered, he  _ does  _ help himself to the few croquettes left on the plate in front of Hyunjin. There’s silence in that space, and in that space he thinks about how they’re  _ here,  _ in a nice restaurant, talking about guys and stuff. They’re kind of like the fancy well dressed gay guys he sees on TV dealing with the same callibur of drama that he sees on TV. 

“Um,” Hyunjin purses his lips and reaches for a croquette himself with dainty long fingers. Even though he’s been going to places like this his whole life, and Hyunjin probably hasn’t, Hyunjin looks expensive enough, moves smooth enough, to look like he really  _ does  _ belong. Changbin has never felt that way. “I’m sorry about,” Hyunjin swallows thickly, but it doesn’t come across as tense or awkward. ‘If that puts you in a weird spot.” 

“No...it’s fine.” 

* * *

Hyunjin puts his inappropriate attraction to Changbin where it belongs. Second or third desk drawer alongside a stack of papers he meant to throw out months ago. It’s something that he has to do because...because he wants to be with Jinyoung. Experienced, level headed, loves to top, Jinyoung.

Its something that he has to do given the way that Changbin and Chan gawk at each other with wide eyes, hearts beating out of their chests, like cartoon wolves. 

It’s fine, because that’s where he shoved his attraction to Chan too, and it’s been there so long that he barely notices anymore. 

Don’t get him wrong. There’s times like now where Chan uses free weights with absolute perfect form, muscles in his arms and back pulling taut, and he kind of wonders why he shoved the attraction away...but it’s more like a sudden craving for a flavor of chips that were discontinued years ago rather than an actual pang of hunger. 

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to do anything to make you mad at me.” Chan makes a little indignant look to the side, one that Hyunjin isn’t supposed to see, or if he is, isn’t supposed to decipher it. “Bro code is serious business.” 

That’s funny on like so many levels. Level 1 ground floor. He thinks he and Changbin are a thing. Hell, he probably still thinks he and Changbin hooked up. Level 2: linens, cookware, and missing the fucking point. Chan wants to make a move on Changbin, and is concerned about breaking code with Hyunjin.  _ But  _ Felix brought him into the group, which means he and Chan have both broken code. Level 3: Menswear, athletics, and denial. Felix. Just Felix. 

“Dude,” Chan gestures at the machine that he just left. 

“You’re gonna use it next. I’ll clean the next one. 

“Dude!” Chan gestures to the bench, which is shining and damp with his own sweat. God damn it. 

“Listen,” Hyunjin goes through the motions of wiping down the machine. Then he wipes down his brow with his towel. His eyes sting from all the sweat. 

Hyunjin then racks the arm press machine and gets to work. It’s easy to let the  _ clink clink clink  _ of the weight machines pulverize whatever thoughts are welling up in his brain right now. “I mean, I can tell you, it’s not like that with me and Changbin.” 

* * *

So this is what sex is like when the other person doesn’t run into the bathroom and spill their guts. 

Changbin shouldn’t compare the two, but other than Chan, who is very much inside of him right now, his most  _ recent  _ reference point is Hyunjin. There’s still a lot of kissing, a  _ lot  _ of kissing. Chan’s lips slot against his and linger only long enough to make him want more. Every kiss is a cliffhanger, and he grows frustrated with a lack of resolution. 

Chan laughs at him, but in a way that feels tender. 

His cock feels so blunt inside of him. Changbin holds on for dear life, clinging to his back, drawing him in deeper. He’s not as slippery. Chan isn’t going anywhere. 

“You’re doing so good baby.” 

_ Holy fuck.  _ He didn’t know words could work on his dick like that. 

“Ah, you like that huh?” 

Changbin responds with another kiss, this time struggling to sit up and  _ take  _ the kiss that he so badly needs. He traps Chan’s lower lip between his teeth. 

Chan fucks him so nice and so slow that he cums all across his stomach. Chan pulls out and tells him to suck and then has the audacity to call him a good boy when he swallows his cum. 

Changbin gets hard again almost instantly. 

Chan’s like  _ good at sex.  _ Not that Hyunjin wasn’t good at sex...well technically, he doesn’t know if Hyunjin was good or sex or not. That doesn’t matter so much when Chan is balls deep inside of him. Like, Chan radiates a certain kind of competence. Changbin doesn’t have to think about it. 

* * *

He thought that maybe he’d be sad, maybe even angry about Hyunjin. And he was...For like maybe fifteen minutes. 

Fucking Chan is like findng the missing, dick shaped piece of the puzzle. 

It’s like...It’s like it’s written across their foreheads. Gay. Gay. Gay gay gay. This is what he’s been waiting for when he came to university, the promised land of pretty performing arts types. 

Not like...in the same way that all of Felix’s friends seem to be gay, or at least some level of not straight. Because like...It’s totally written across Minho, Chan, and Han’s foreheads too. Gay. Gay. Gay gay gay. But theirs isn’t in nice, glittery pink gel pen and cursive font. 

He wants to trade clothes with Hyunjin, never mind the fact that all his shirts give him sweater paws and his jeans drag down to the floor. He wants to pester Hyunjin into telling him what boys he thinks are cute, just so he can laugh at his choices. He wants someone to be gay with. 

And like with Chan, he wants to wear Chan’s hoodie home after sleeping over and never give it back. He wants Chan to tell him he’s cute and kiss him on the neck and fuck him into the mattress. He wants someone to  _ be gay with.  _

Oh, he should write that down and use it later in a line or a lyric because that’s really fucking deep Seo. 

It’s not that he doesn’t still think that Hyunjin isn’t hot as hell. He is _.  _ It’s just that for whatever reason, he doesn’t feel the need to overanalyze. Doesn’t worry about if he’s going to make a move, or skillfully time his own. 

That makes it a lot easier to forgive Hyunjin for whatever it is that he did...Or didn’t do. 

He wants Hyunjin to teach him his ways, and become this sleek, exotic thing that men chase after. Someone who is graceful, knowledgable, and doesn’t have horrible enema accidents--Jesus fucking christ he can still remember that rando from Grindr, and his horrified face. He doesn’t care if he’s almost a year younger, he needs a temptation tutor, a sex sage, an ass advisor, a--friend. 

Damn that’s lame. If he said any of it out loud, Hyunjin would rightfully kick him out of his apartment. 

“Guess what?” Changbin flops back onto the sofa clutching a throw pillow. 

“Uh,” Hyunjin considers his answer carefully. “You and Chan hooked up?” 

“How’d you know?” Okay, he’s been texting Hyunjin about it for days now, but--

“You glow with the light of a man who has fresh dick.” 

“Who talks like that?” Changbin laughs. 

“I guess someone who understands all the ins and outs of the Bang Chan method of seduction.”

“Wait, wait wait, so you and Chan used to fuck?” 

“Yeah, I don’t know if this is great dinner conversation, but, yeah. Once or twice. Nothing serious, so don’t let that influence your happiness.” 

“And the other night we were talking...it seems like...Minho and Chan used to?” 

“Well, that’s kind of how Minho started coming around. Chan’s got this friend Yugyeom, who knows this guy Jungkook, who was like, kind of Minho’s boyfriend, but also kind of an asshole to him.” 

“Minho?” 

“Yeah, he wasn’t always a stone cold maneater.” 

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you know what Chan’s dick looks like. I’m gonna have to go out with him with that in the back of my mind” 

“If it makes you feel any better, I know what your dick looks like too.” Hyunjin continues. “It’s not that abnormal. Like with some of my other friend groups it happens too. I fucked Bomin, and Bomin fucked my other friend Dawhi. We just kind of…” 

“How,” Changbin furrows his brow. It’s a delicate kind of question, and Changbin has a habit of dropping shit and breaking it. “How does everyone stay friends like that?” 

Hyunjin clicks his tongue at him in disapproval. “Ah, go talk to your boyfriend about these things. I’m not the one that gives advice. I’m the hot flamboyant one.” 

The awkward silence is a great time for them to shovel more pizza into their mouths. 

It’s kind of surprising when Hyunjin speaks again, still on topic. “I guess, really, its not always that clean. When Bam and Chan broke up it was really bad. They didn’t talk for like a year, but it’s better now. I think at the end of the day, you have to remember that there are like maybe thirty gay people in seoul.”

Changbin laughs. 

“I’m serious. And then, some of those, like maybe twelve of them, are lesbians. So you have, like eighteen people to date” 

“Seventeen, you can’t date yourself,” Changbin corrects. 

“See that’s why I’m not the advice giving one. Seventeen people to chose to be your friends and your boyfriends. That would get pretty lonely pretty fast if you fucked everyone and never made up after you broke up.” 

“What if...No offense,” 

“Deeply.” 

“What if I tried not to break up with a lot of people?” It’s something that he wanted to say as a statement, but it comes out a question. Is that even possible? 

Hyunjin’s response is so subtle that it doesn’t even really register right away, but haunts hem when he understands. A curled smile and a knowing look. “Sure.”

* * *

“Should I say something?” He and Changbin are just friends now, and he’s got to say its kind of a relief figuring out you’re friends. 

Friends means figuring out that even if you like each other, you’re incompatible. Friends means finding out that someone’s not into you, but still wanting to see each other. Friends means seeing someone chew with their mouth open or hear them crack their knuckles too many times, but still wanting to help them. Friends means barfing right in front of them and feeling your dick, and balls too, migrate so far up into your torso that there’s nothing to do other than maybe, almost, kind of coexist. 

So he can just be like...be friends with Changbin. There’s no longer a need to dissect every joke that makes him laugh and try to figure out why. If he texts him “r u up” at 330 in the morning, his pride might still get hurt, but only cause he’ll make fun of his meme game, not because he’ll downright reject him. 

Friends.

Like  _ friends  _ friends. 

Which makes him  _ want  _ to say something. 

Hyunjin’s asking Minho, but for whatever reason, Jinyoung decides to respond, “why?”

He finds it far more irritating than either of his friends' antics. 

Hyunjin watches the scene unfold before him, the whole thing framed by gold and pink lights that lead down the long polished wood aisle of the bowling alley. Changbin has twenty pounds of muscle on any of them, except for Chan, easily. Yet, he commands the attention of his defacto boyfriend. He has Chan, his unofficial official, wrapped around his finger. But he also has the attention of a certain Han Jisung. 

They caress, touch, guide his form, so that Changbin, someone who could pick any one of them up over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, might hit one or two pins.

And hitting those two pins is a stark contrast to the last three frames where he granny pitched the ball and got gutters each time. 

“Alright baby, this is what you’re gonna do,” Han instructs. 

“Like this?” Changbin preens at the attention. Speaks to them in his upward inflected voice that he only uses for a certain type of man. Maybe that’s why it sounds so earsplitting to Hyunjin. 

Luckily, it gets drowned out by the thunking sound of bowling balls hitting lacquered wood and the sound of someone playing  _ Fantastic Baby  _ on the juke box for what has to be the fifth time in a row. 

“Looks like this body conversation’s become a three way call,” Minho quips. 

“ _ Thank you.”  _ Hyunjin interjects. “I was waiting for my snappy counterpart to hit me with a good one liner. 

“Yeah, cause you’re so bad at it on your own.” 

“If it was you--” 

Minho scoffs.

“Listen, if it was like, literally anybody else, I wouldn’t care. But Changbin--” The bottom of his feet tingle from the weird rented shoes. He’s not as into it as Minho and Yugyeom and some of the others, so he doesn’t have his own gear. It feels like maybe he’s sweat through his socks, and his foot is sliding around in the shoe. He’ll surely have blisters there tomorrow. “They’ve only been seeing each other for a few months and--” His throat feels dry. 

“He and Chan have definitely got that  _ creative chemistry.”  _

“Is that what we’re calling three a.m. convenience handjobs?” Han and Chan’s sporadic hookups are like the unspoken of secret that everyone knows about. 

It wouldn’t piss him off, if Jinyoung were wrong, or were just clueless, but he’s not wrong. So what Jinyoung says pisses him off. “Jinnie, if you want your friend to grow up, let him make misteaks.” 

* * *

Like an affront to every tumultuous emotion that swirls through his mind right now, the view outside of Jinyoung’s sliding glass window is picturesque. When the starry night sky melts into a warmer shade of pink, hints of orange drip down below the silhouettes of high rises. 

If only if it were black and rainy right now, maybe Hyunjin would feel a little bit more justified.

He looks at the time display on his phone and wonders if anyone would possibly be awake right now that he could call. Chan maybe. Most likely to be up, or more likely still up from the night before. But, given the subject matter...Hyunjin looks at Jinyoung sleeping peacefully on the other side of the bed.

Covers pulled down low, Hyunjin can see little purple marks accenting his skin. H _ e  _ put those marks there just a few hours ago. His expression is peaceful as he rests. 

Something isn’t right, and even though Hyunjin can’t pin down a particular time, they probably haven’t been in awhile. 

He won’t bother Chan, not at sunrise over his ex’s best friend. 

He won’t bother Minho either. Minho would answer, no questions asked. He’d listen to him talk as he paced back and forth on the balcony and enact petty revenge for interrupting his beauty sleep later. Felix? Felix is the kindest person that he’s ever met, but he also has a crazy weird protective side. He launched an aggressive, and successful, campaign to get Jungkook banned from the bowling alley after things went sideways with Minho. God only knows what he’d do to Jinyoung. 

Hyunjin opens up his contacts and messages Changbin an eloquent, “hey. U sleepin?” Then flops back onto the high thread count, heather gray sheets. 

It’s surprising when his phone buzzes in his clenched hand. “What hell are you doing up?” 

“What are  _ you  _ doing up?” Probably up all night with Chan...And maybe Han. 

“I woke up because Chan wasn’t in bed with me. He’s still working with Han apparently :(“ Then he double texts. “What’s going on?” 

Hyunjin types up on his phone, “I’m watching the guy that I think I've fallen out of love with sleep. My ass is sore from some really, really great sex. We’ve been together for like two years. Isn’t that crazy? I think I’m gonna break up with him.” And Hyunjin deletes it all before he can hit send. 

And again, “remember when you saw me out at lunch?” gets deleted before he can send. 

So he settles on a pitiful, “there was a car alarm going off below. I can’t get back to sleep.” Frustrated with himself, Hyunjin turns off his phone’s screen and puts it face down onto the nightstand. 

As if on cue, the problem that Hyunjin does not want to confront, wraps his arms around his middle and draws him closer, like a dare to confront him. “Good morning,” mumbled into the crook of his neck and followed up by soft kisses. “It’s so early.” 

It is. Hyunjin’s stomach feels sour in the way that it usually only does before early morning flights. The feeling settles in when his body hasn’t gotten enough rest, and everything’s thrown off balance. There’s a fogginess between his eyes that makes everything blurry. 

“Couldn’t get back to sleep.” 

“Hm,” Jinnyoung drapes himself over Hyunjin. The kiss is long, languid, exploratory. Hyunjin knows what’s happening. He’s used to getting woken up before the sun came up. Jinyoung had 8 am classes for years. Now he rises early to go to the gym before work. Hyunjin knows how he feels. Although his heart may realize one thing, his body wants another. It’s not conflicted, no Hyunjin almost sees it as two volatile things living in harmony inside of him just like he and Jinyoung have done for years. 

Teasing pinches given first to his left nipple, and then to his right. Jinyoung slides in easily, because he’s still stretched from last night. He fucks Hyunjin in a way that is somehow both gentle and rough. Lazy kisses and feather light touches contrast the feeling of skin against skin when there’s not quite enough lube. Harmony. Jinyoung makes him cum in his hand, and then cums on the small of his back. 

The feeling of harmony is so comforting that Hyunjin falls asleep, and doesn’t look at his phone again until he wakes up later. Almost 11 in the morning, he’s alone in Jinyoung’s big bed. Changbin's latest text is time stamped at just after seven in the morning. “Its weird that you messaged me.” And a double text. “We fucked Han last night.” 

* * *

“Oh, this is bad.” 

“Yeah.” Hyunjin moves to pause the streaming. “Three episode veto?” 

“Three episode veto,” Changbin agrees. 

“Yeah, it’s not gonna get better is it?” Minho adds. 

“So…” they stumble through a few Youtube videos, but it’s that awkward time where it’s too late to try to pick a new series, but too soon to call it a night. “What now?” Chan asks. 

Changbin has his head nested in Hyunjin’s armpit. He’s probably contractually obligated to cuddle with his boyfriend right now, but everything just feels off. He can’t stop thinking about Han, and shouldn’t he? It’s been almost a week.

He knows that Chan steals furtive glances of him, of them, from time to time. But Hyunjin’s playing with his hair and it feels too good to worry about placating Chan. 

Even if Chan burns with jealousy because Changbin’s acting like a paperweight for his moist and waifish friend, it shouldn’t really fucking matter. Honestly? Chan fucking owes him. 

“We could study Latin,” Hyunjin offers. 

That causes Changbin to perk up, and unbury his face. 

He’s met with equally quizzical, but arguably far more horny and mischievous glances from Minho and Chan. 

Hyunjin hardly ever drinks much on Hungover Hyung nights, and if he does, it’s rarely more than a single glass of wine. Tonight being the exception. Hyunjin’s face flushes red. His face is misted with his sexy sweat...Soon to turn sex sweat. He has a feeling that alcohol has something to do with his request. 

“Might be fun,” Minho comments dryly. “But it’s been awhile since there’s been a couple.” His eyes make accusations to Changbin and Chan. “You’re not gonna argue about someone looking at your boyfriend’s dick or something right?” 

Chan speaks on both of their behalf. “Oh, we have always cheated in Latin Class.” 

Changbin’s down. He supposes. 

Except now there’s a task more daunting than finding a drama they all agree on. 

Finding porn they all agree on. 

Minho pulls up his phone so they can cast something. “What are we feeling today everyone? Blow jobs? Point of view?” 

“Twinks?”    
  
“Daring today aren’t we Chan,” Minho teases. 

“Daddies,” Changbin interjects excitedly, and everyone slaps him for it. 

“We could do het again,” Minho floats the idea cautiously. “That was kind of fun.” 

This earns several unenthused groans. 

They’ve apparently been doing this for a long time. Like, before Changbin started coming around. But, he was there when the event earned its namesake. One time they watched this horrible porno from the 70s that was also, kind of, a historical retelling of ancient Rome. Like between him and Minho they’d read enough about history to put the pieces together. So now, getting together and watching porn with your friends, jerking off in the same room? That’s Latin class. 

Suddenly inspired, Changbin suggests, “what about old school. Like 70s or something?” It’s never that fun when the porn is  _ actually  _ sexy. It gets too weird too fast. 

“Oh, cause like your bush?” Hyunjin playfully grabs at him, like he’s going to pull at his pubes through his sweats. Changbin curls in on himself and pushes Hyunjin away. 

Minho only hums to himself, too pleased at Changbin’s suggestion. “I like it. I like it.” 

There’s shuffling around on Hyunjin’s sofa so that they’re all squished too close together like sardines. Changbin can’t help but noticed they’re arranged in a combination that’s bound to cause maximum drama. Hyunjin on the end, Changbin sandwiched between Hyunjin and Chan and Minho on the end. 

“Oh my god. Look at that moustache.” 

“I’ve wanted one like that for awhile,” Changbin adds. 

Jerking off isn’t required. No one whipped their dick out on het night. Even if they were into it, which Changbin shamefully admits that he kind of was. Their pride as card carrying homos was at stake. 

And admittedly, it takes awhile for things to get started. So long that Changbin more or less resigned himself to a shameful jerkoff when he got home. But by and by the riffing fades and then there’s only silence layered over the bubbly 70s music that acts as a soundtrack for the world’s most uncomfortable looking blowjob scene. 

No one wants to be first. Like what if you grossly misread the vibe and you're the only one with your dick out?

But Hyunjin makes the first move, unzipping his pants with a sharp metallic noise that cuts through the bodily moans on screen. 

And like, he’s not gonna leave his bro hanging with his dick out. So Changbin does the same. It’s followed by two more sharp zipping sounds from Minho and Chan. 

A familiar, rough hand is on him, coaxing him from halfhard to hard, but it takes more effort, more pressure than normal. W _ hy?  _ Chan is offensively sexy and  _ still  _ his boyfriend. Without an answer, Changbin closes his eyes and focuses on the rustle of clothing and skin around him, the sounds of sex on the screen before him. 

When he opens his eyes again, he doesn’t really know where to look. If he looks at Chan’s hand on his cock, he’ll have to think about  _ why.  _ On screen is the world’s grossest, hairiest asshole. Minho is pretty, but across from Chan, which means looking at Chan and confronting  _ why.  _ Honestly. It seems risky. 

So he turns his attention to his left. And honestly? If he didn’t know Hyunjin so well, the sight of him would probably be enough to make him bust a nut. Lower lip trapped beneath his teeth, he fists his giant cock. Sweat beads at his temple, and Changbin knows that even though he looks sexy right now, he’s seconds away from his pores opening up like faucets and pitting out out his shirt. 

But he can’t focus on all of those beautiful things, and can’t bust a nut right away, because he knows Hyunjin so well. He fists himself aggressively, like he too is trying to lose himself in pleasure instead of asking  _ why.  _ Hyunjin’s eyes look glassy, and the skin puffy like he’s been crying.

Hyunjin locks eyes with him, and it’s like a spell gets cast over him. He  _ can’t  _ look away, not even when Chan’s gaze and touch, hot and insistent, demands otherwise. 

He could’ve just bust a nut while looking at his friend, but no. Changbin straight up fucks up. He pushes Chan’s hand away and wraps his own hand around his cock. Jerks himself hard while he stares at Hyunjin’s mouth. Thinks about what it would be like to fuck into his mouth, cum into his best friend’s mouth and squeeze his cheeks so that he has to show the cum pooled on his tongue inside. 

No, fuck that. Cum on his pretty face. 

Oh  _ fuck.  _ Changbin’s spilling into his hand and Minho’s taunting him for cumming first. 

“Already Changbin?” 

After he comes, Changbin comes back to reality. Sort of. Remembering where he is and who he’s with, he does his best to stave off the argument that he already knows festers deep. He wraps his hand around Chan’s cock and pulls him in for a sloppy, demanding kiss. 

Chan cums almost at the same time as Hyunjin. Changbin doesn’t allow himself to watch. 

Then Minho, then they pass around a box of tissues, they stuff their dicks back in, and then pretend that it never happened. 

When it’s time to leave, Chan asks him, “do you want a ride home?” almost like they didn’t show up together. 

And Changbin responds, because he doesn’t want to leave, “I think I wanna chill here for awhile.” 

Then it’s just the two of them. 

There’s a couple times that Hyunjin looks over at him, head propped up in his hand as he scrolls through his Youtube suggestions for a lack of anything better to watch. The look silently says, “Oh, you’re still here?” And Changbin understands that it isn’t accusatory, that he hasn’t  _ really  _ overstayed his welcome. 

So he responds with a return glance that wordlessly says, “yes I’m still here.” 

“Never have I ever.” Changbin puts up three fingers and waves them in front of Hyunjin. “Not known what to say to you. Ever.” It’s sappy, and it really doesn’t mean much all things considered, but it’s true. “Until like, right now.” 

To Changbin’s surprise, Hyunjin puts a finger down too. 

Neither of them speak for a long time. Then Hyunjin breaks it. “I didn’t just kiss a girl.” 

“Huh?”

“Oh, I’m sorry you don’t remember the details of a conversation we had almost a year ago? I’m sorry I thought you were my friend,” Hyunjin turns away from him dramatically. Changbin chases. 

Right. The first time he came over and hung out, just the four of them, they played this game. One of several things that Changbin has always wanted to ask about, but never had the courage. “Oh, yeah. You and Chan, our heterosexual friends.”

“I was like..engaged to a girl when I was eighteen. That’s why I kissed her.” 

“Wait what, for real?” 

“You know about my parents.” It’s come up a few times. He knows the basics. 

“So you know, they’re in a cult,” a cult that he’s read about when they crop up once a year or so in the news. 

“Yeah. They do these massive weddings right?” 

“Right.” 

“So, you know our pastor said there was this girl I needed to meet. So I did, cause that’s what you do. That was on like,” Hyunjin remembers he had calculus the next day and he was nervous about completing his assignment. “I don’t know a Tuesday or a Wednesday. And we had an engagement party on like...a Saturday. The next same week. We somehow ended up in the coat room of this restaurant? I don’t know, I think we were just looking for a sign that it would be okay. You know? If we didn’t hate it, it would be okay.” 

Changbin doesn’t say anything. How  _ can  _ he say anything? 

“I tried to finger her too. It was really horrible for both of us.” Hyunjin laughs drly, as if it's painful to remember. "It's the girl who waitresses at the hot pot place."

"Somi!?" Changbin asks with incredulity. 

“Yeah, we’re pretty good friends now. That’s why we never get charged for extra sides.” 

There’s so much more he wants to know, but the questions that linger there can wait until later because, "something’s wrong, and whatever that is, I don’t think that it has to do with you disappointing a woman sexually years ago.” 

When Hyunjin finally says it out loud, it seems so obvious that Changbin feels like an asshole for not guessing. “I broke up with Jinyoung last week. Never have I ever told anyone else that.” 

“Damn dude.” 

“I feel bad even though I’m the one that went through with it. I don’t know.”

“I think that’s allowed.” 

“I always felt like I liked him more than he liked me. Combine that with the fact that he’s older than me, and his family has more money, and he’s in law school and is probably going to be some super, famous, power attorney someday--And what am I gonna be? I’ve always kept him at a distance. And then...all of a sudden there was too much distance. Like I had a problem with getting exactly what I wanted.” 

Now it’s Changbin’s turn to cuddle Hyunjin. He lays his head on his stomach and stares at the thumbnails on his television. 

“Never had I ever had a threesome.” 

Ah. There it is. He was kind of hoping that Hyunjin would forget all about it. 

“Yeah. I don’t know. Han is pretty hot. He came back to Chan’s. We were making music. He said he wanted to suck my dick. Chan said why not, so I said, why not.” 

“You regret it?” 

“Maybe, I don’t know.” Changbin exhales slowly, trying to think about how he really, really feels. “I don’t know. I know we’ve both done stuff. I get drunk and make out with you. Or like...Chan gets handsy, really handsy with Felix. Even though I wanted it, it was really obvious that wasn’t the first time they’ve hooked up. So it still feels like Chan cheated on me. Which is stupid because Han did way more stuff to me. His dick was inside of me--” 

“Ew.”

“I’m sorry. I’m making this all about me.” In that moment, he realizes that the pressure behind his eyes wasn’t really a budding migraine at all but the pinprick sensation of budding teardrops. He’s always making Hyunjin prop him up even when Hyunjin’s the one that needs it. 

“Oh no. Oh Binnie.” Concern fills Hyunjin’s expression and it’s difficult to look at. Like seeing someone else with that level of concern for him makes him know that it’s real and it’s fucked up. “What are you gonna do?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“What are you gonna do?” 

“I don’t know either.” 

* * *

He’d like to say he doesn’t even know  _ how  _ he got into this situation, but he  _ knows  _ for a fact that’s a goddamn lie. It's another night where Changbin is out with Chan, trying to mend whatever it is that they’ve already broken. 

Felix is working, Minho has bowling league. None of his other friends completely know what’s going on, so bringing them up to speed sounds more painful than going out alone. 

So he goes out alone and runs into Han, because...well...Changbin is out with Chan, trying to mend whatever it is that they’d like to blame on Han breaking. 

It’s like they’re making excuses all night. 

“The drinks are pretty strong tonight.” They’re really not any stronger than normal. Probably under poured compared to any other bar on this block. Let’s put it this way. He’s knocked back three and his delicate gut is completely unbothered. 

“Yeah, lemme get you another. Vodka cran?” And then when Han returns with two drinks overflowing with well liquor and sugar water, “Ugh, this band is still going? I was hoping they’d be done.” 

“They’re not great.” He’s sweaty. Cause he’s  _ indoors  _ and the temperature is above forty degrees. So, of course he’s sweaty. 

“But how fucking lame is everyone else for not being out tonight?” 

“Han what if we were the lame ones?” 

Han sucks in air like he’s hesitant to say what he wants to say. But the pressure’s built up so badly, there’s no stopping it. “I’m like, fuckin sorry about your sugar daddy or whatever. That sucks bro.” 

Hyunjin is apt to agree, even if that means agreeing with Han. That does indeed suck, bro. “Yeah. It does.” What the fuck is he actually supposed to say in response? “Changbin--” If Han gets to bring up Jinyoung when he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, Changbin can bring up...that mess. 

“He’s kind of just a baby,” Han supplies. “It’s hard for me to remember that.” 

Han’s kind of right about that too. Changbin isn’t immature, quite the opposite. But the wrong person could sell him some ocean front property north of the DMZ and Changbin would throw down his black card. He’s older than them both, but he still acts like he just proudly rubbed one out to a guy and realized that he was into boys. Naive. That makes him not even the cute pudgy round kind of baby. Even after almost a year of knowing him, he’s the nasty pink-raisin newborn kind. 

“Chan--” 

Jisung rolls his eyes and takes a long gulp of his drink. And well, hell Hyunjin can agree to that too, why not? 

“What is Chan’s grand fucking plan in all of this? Like, does he really think that Felix is gonna sit there, watch him have all of these disastrous relationships.” He loves Chan, he really does, but there’s something cathartic about just letting out  _ a fraction  _ of the thoughts he’s repressed over the past god-only-knows how long. “And be like ‘okay, you totally got that out of your system. Let’s do this. Let’s go get fucking married.’ Whenever Chan decides he’s  _ finally  _ ready?” 

“I think he thinks that.” 

The conversation dries up after that, and then quickly after, their drinks. There’s no real negotiation about what happens next, it just kind of does. They fall back on the time honored tradition of tipsy and sad. 

“You wanna uh--” 

Hyunjin doesn’t respond, just grabs Han’s hand, and uses his height to leverage through the crowd. When they emerge from the cloud of smoke and sound onto the street, it’s Han that takes over next, pulling them into a filthy-dark parking structure. 

It smells like a muted version of the bar, second hand smoke, and stale alcohol, and urine. 

Hyunjin takes Han into his mouth in the shadows, where all shameful things hide. 

“Oh my god,” Han threads his fingers through his hair, upending his beanie, and fuck off Han really? His roots are showing. But the length of his cock feels so right in his mouth. Its catharsis for an irritation that he can’t even name. He forgets to  _ stay  _ mad at Han. “Tell me. I know you’ve thought about this.” 

Hyunjin pulls off of his cock with an undignified gurgle. “Not as much as you have,” before taking him back into his mouth and sliding all the way down.

It doesn’t take him long to cum at all. Hyunjin  _ will  _ make fun of him for the acidic taste of his cum, eat a fucking fruit Han, but he won’t be malicious about it. Because like...Something changes, and Hyunjin can tell no sooner than his lips leave Han’s cock. They’re something like friends now.

* * *

“You were right to come to me,” Minho says, lighting a fourth incense stick and placing it in the molded grasp of a troll doll. 

“You told me to come here right away because you had a whole bunch of and I’m quoting here, “extremely gay hypercolor muscle tees from the 90s.” 

The vintage store looks like something out of a coming of age fever dream. A cat slinks between the numerous racks of vintage clothing. There’s kitsch cluttered everywhere, velvet paintings and plastic pitchers and cup sets.

But Minho is a vexing god in paisley and blue tinted lenses. He extracts a glass waterbottle with macrame netting around it from underneath the counter. “You look like you’ve been crying.” 

“Yeah, you think?” 

“Drink some water. You’ll get dehydrated.” 

Changbin listens. 

The bundle of jingle bells on the door signify that a couple has entered the store. The woman is Korean and wears a wide brimmed hat on her head. The guy is white, and has a man bun. If she stays with him, she’s gonna end up pregnant in Nebraska. 

Changbin doesn’t really know where Nebraska is other than it’s in America, but not the cool parts like LA or New York. 

“Step into my office won’t you?” Minho gestures to a beanbag chair nestled near the counter, hidden from the rest of the store. “While I take care of them?” 

So Changbin does. He sinks into a flat, sad beanbag chair and tries to come up with an answer for whatever Minho is about to ask him. 

After Minho sells her a sundress and him a pair of vintage Reebok’s, he takes all of Changbin’s precut answers and spills them onto the floor as if they were the the glass marbles entombed in blue jars on the counter. “Well, whatever happened, it  _ wasn’t  _ your fault.” Then, from a dainty china tea cup he pulls two sopping wet tea bags. Dangling them over Changbin, droplets of tea splatter against his face and his nice pink shirt. “Put these over your eyes. So they don’t get puffy.” 

Changbin complies, and the whole world goes dark. It’s nice that he doesn’t have to look at Minho while they talk. It's weird that instead of seeing Minho, he focuses on the warm and wet on the lids of his eyes. 

“The problem is, it’s probably not Chan’s fault either. That’s how these things work right? No one’s blameless.” 

“We argued about us and Han? I’m sure you know all about that.”

“My best friend is, in fact, penciled in for a session this evening. We’re getting desert at a place neither of us can afford, because the situation seems dire.” 

“We argued about Han, but somehow it turned into arguing about me and Hyunjin, which is weird because he’s said before that he likes seeing us together when we’re drunk and cuddly.” 

There’s a slurping sound followed by a clink of china against china.“Is that what we’re calling sticking your tongue down his throat.” 

“But as we kept arguing, it was super obvious that it wasn’t about me? Like at all? It was about deflecting the fact that he and Han had been hooking up like….right up until we got together” 

“I guess, how did he  _ ever  _ expect to have anything good with me, if he was still into Han?” 

“We’ve been wondering that ourselves for a long time, Changbin. Because he does stuff like this a lot. So, if you find out, do tell me, Hyunjin, Jisung, Felix--” 

“So everybody knows, and no one decided to  _ tell me  _ that the person I was falling--The person that I was dating was probably never gonna like me as much as I liked him?” He feels sick from the overpowering scent of nag champa. He feels sick at the realization that everyone seemed to know something he didn’t. 

“If we did. If I said something, or Hyunjin said something, do you think that would’ve changed anything?” 

“No,” Changbin mumbles. 

“And honestly, it probably wouldn’t have changed anything for Chan either. Some people are just oblivious.”

* * *

Hyunjin, do you not see what is wrong with this picture?” Changbin complains. 

“Ah,” Hyunjin pops the clasp on a single curler he’s got situated on his bangs. Only when it’s firmly in place does he think about really responding to Changbin. He makes eye contact in the bathroom mirror as he checks himself out. “No?” 

“You messaged me and said, and I’m quoting here, “let’s get pizza, or french fries, or one of those foods that makes me totally understand why Americans are fat.” 

“Yeah, I probably did.” Hyunjin rummages through his skincare bag until he finds his contacts case. Yeah, it’s a blue eyes kind of night. The thing is, he and Changbin have been doing their fair share of moping. Lots of takeout, shitty movies, ice cream, and it’s been healing in a way. 

He’s realized just how much of his time Jinyoung monopolized. Or Chan of Changbin’s time really. Because he saw Changbin like, all the time. But when Chan was around, it was different. When Jinyoung was around, it was different. 

“Aren’t you tired of being miserable though?” he asks Changbin, who has crowded into his space in the bathroom now. He’s looking at his bb cream, and his body glitter collection. Changbin, despite being the crown princess of wearing pink and taking cock, still looks at these things the way a straight man looks at skin care products. Confusion. Maybe they can fix that tonight. “What is it that they say? The best way to get over someone is to get under somebody else?” 

“Who the fuck actually says that?” 

“We’re going out tonight. Felix is coming too in solidarity.” 

“Solidary for what?” 

“I dunno? Bottom solidarity? Broken heart solidarity? We’re the last three in the group that haven’t fucked solidarity--” 

“We barely count as never--” 

“Seo Changbin?” Hyunjin pulls the half empty bottle of Skinny Girl Margarita he’s been sipping on since 5 pm from his makeup and toothpaste encrusted counter. Okay, maybe he’s still being a depressed bastard. They’ll go out tonight, and tomorrow he’s giving everything a good scrub down. “Are you with me or against me?” 

* * *

“Hyunjinnie,” Changbin’s face is flush, but the glassy look he gets in his eyes when he’s  _ passed out with his shoes on gone  _ is absent. So then, what’s his excuse? This guy with a Fendi shirt literally had his tongue in his mouth when Changbin burst in between them. 

Oh yeah. Changbin wouldn’t notice an elephant in the middle of the room, but he would notice a single book on a cluttered shelf at the  _ back  _ of said room from the door frame and walk around the elephant to get to it. He’s a special kind of unobservant. Read a room? The fine print, sure. 

“Hyunjinnie, I pulled somebody!” He beams. 

“Holy shit dude that’s amazing!” Hyunjin unhooks his fingers from the guy’s belt loop to give his best friend a high five. Because that’s what tonight is all about. Casual sex. Casual sex and friendship. 

Changbin looks at him expectantly and subsequently back at the guy he’s holding hands with. He’s the kind of person who believes that he can grow a beard, but really he’s just covered in peach fuzz. Hynjin might hate people like this, but it’s easy to see why Changbin likes him. He’s got arms the size of watermelons “So uh, he lives with his parents too.” 

“Bin,” Hyunjin cocks his head at the cock  _ he’s  _ managed to pull from the crowd. “It’s already been spoken for.” Changbin could afford a hotel room, but he’s probably afraid of some weird hyper specific scenario where his mother pours through his credit card statement and zeroes in on that one charge. 

The guy that he’d been tongue fucking looks Changbin up and down hungrily and decides to speak. “Three’s company. And uh--four’s company too.” 

“I don’t want an orgy happening in my apartment,” he’s starting to get a headache from all of the shouting. Can’t they get back to tongue fucking. 

“It won’t!” Changbin pleads. “Come on, I didn’t even wanna go out tonight. You gotta.” Changbin presses on, afraid of being told  _ no.  _ “I’ll buy you a bulgogi bowl tomorrow when we’re hungover..” 

Get fucked, stare at Changbin’s muscles, get hungover bulgogi with his best friend. It sounds nice, and he’d totally be a dick if he dragged Changbin out to try to get dick, and then cock block him. 

All the liquor makes him truly believe it’s all gonna go down without a hitch. 

* * *

“Hey,” This is rude as hell. After all, Hyunjin’s dude is going town on his nipples he’s a baby calf and Hyunjin is--You know what that’s gross--But Hyunjin just looks so fucking bored, so Changbin does it anyway. 

Hyunjin lolls his head to the side and turns towards Changbin. “Hey,” He watches for a moment, as the guy he brought home latches himself onto his neck and tries the sexy dracula move...just without the sexy parts. 

Hyunjin’s past that normal sweaty glow that he gets in the club. Totally onto that drenched, slippery slug boy phase. He looks like he’s having about as much fun as you’d have on a trip to the dentist. 

Damn, the guy he brought home just sucks. 

When he thinks about it, specifically the teeth sunk into his neck, the guy that Changbin brought home kind of sucks too. 

And a friend in need is a friend indeed, whatever the fuck that means. It probably means make out with Hyunjin and his stupid puffy lips. So he does just that, slotting his lips over Hyunjin’s. Yeah. Kissing Hyunjin while this other guy kisses his neck is way, way better. 

Hyunjin might be one of the best kissers in the world. He feels like he discovers that once or twice a month when he’s drunk, forgets it, and then rediscovers it anew. His lips are soft and pillowy and he moans into Changbin’s mouth like it’s the best thing in the world. Maybe it is. He’s never had a guy suck his nipples while he’s getting made out with. 

And then they shift on the bed a little bit, and Hyunjin’s nipping at his earlobe, and  _ honestly  _ the other guy could take notes. Nipping at his earlobe and making these needy sounds right in the shell of his ear. 

“Looks like they don’t need us,” says one of the men. He’s not certain if it's his or Hyunjin’s, and he doesn’t really care. 

Hyunjin rolls off of him drunken-sluggish and he looks  _ so  _ stupid it’s kind of adorable. “Hey that’s not true. You think he’s gonna fuck me?” 

“You think he’s gonna fuck me?” Changbin mimics, but asks the honest to god truth. That’s always been their problem. 

“Can you keep your hands to yourself? Well, and me?” 

“Yeah, yeah yeah.” It’s a lie that Changbin truly believes is the truth. 

Because in no time at all, Changbin’s guy has his ass propped high in the air. Changbin’s not like,  _ doing  _ anything while he’s getting fingered, so if Hyunjin wants to make out again that would be pretty cool. 

It turns out, Hyunjin does. Because he’s not really doing anything while the other guy tries to stuff his dick inside of him. 

“You’re not even into me,” The guy Hyunjin brought home redirects his dick stuffing from Hyunjin’s ass to his pants. Of course, all of this happens right about the time the guy that Changbin brought home is trying to stuff his dick into his ass, so Changbin has to push him off. 

“Hey, I can take care of both of you?” The other guy offers. 

“No?” Changbin’s dick goes instasoft. The last thing he wants right now is to have a threesome with his friend. Because that seems to work so fucking well for him. “Get the fuck out.” 

There are some tense awkward seconds where the dicks are stuffing themselves back into their pants, and Changbin and Hyunjin sit awkwardly on the bed. He’s not sure whose fingers intertwine with whose, but it’s a nice anchor when it feels like he’s floating above the room right now, watching like all of this was a movie. 

Twin slams of the door, and then it's just Changbin, Hyunjin and the realization that they almost had sex again. 

“You good?” 

“Yeah. You?” 

“I’m still horny,” Hyunjin pouts. His lips pouted, eyes half lidded, he looks like he’s already been fucked. 

Sure enough, the biggest cock that Changbin’s ever seen still rests heavy between his legs. 

“Sorry I--” 

“Fucking don’t that guy sucked.” 

“Do you want me to?” 

“Nah,” Hyunjin flops back onto the bed dick in hand. Biting his lip, it’s like there’s something more that he wants to say, but just won’t. He looks pretty. He always looks pretty. “Let’s just lay here?” 

“Yeah.” It’s almost a relief when Hyunjin tells him no. After what happened with Chan and Han, he can’t help but think about what Hyunjin said to him forever ago. That it was better to mend things after the fall. But that’s just it. He doesn’t want to have anything with Hyunjin hurt. Ever. Because even though he’s usually surrounded by friends, lately, since he left Chan, he feels so lonely. 

So Changbin lays in the crook of Hyunjin’s arm and tries not to think about how, this isn’t the first time they’ve jerked off next to each other. But it is the first time that they’re all alone. The first time that they’re completely naked. The first time they’re touching.

The room fills with the sharp, syncopated sounds of jerking off. Stifled moans and protesting bed springs. His own alcohol laden breath burns in his mouth, and offsets the acrid scent of sex that fills the room. 

Arm brushes against arm, hip bumps against hip, fingers thread into his fingers. In that moment, they’re sewn together in a tight, and unbreakable seam. 

When he cums, it’s a relief, but not because of the release he so desperately chases. 

“We really should’ve gotten pizza.” 

“Dude, we can still get pizza.”

* * *

Maybe it’s because he’s an only child, maybe it’s just because he’s a bastard, but Hyunjin has always had a problem with sharing. Where Changbin was Felix’s “friend from the tutoring, try not to scare him away”, Seungmin is someone that Hyunjin met through Daewhi. Not even friends yet. Don’t fucking touch. 

He wants something new, something fresh, something clean. 

“So, I think maybe, if we tried this way,” Seungmin walks in a half circle, approaching his other side so that the lighting hits opposite. “Now, okay, tilt your head a little bit.” 

Hyunjin does, imagining that the smell from the food cart across the park is physically pulling him in that direction. “Like this?” 

“Yeah.” Seungmin snaps a few shots with his camera. Not some big clunky DSLR, but something that uses real film. Seungmin says that he’s going to develop them in the university lab. Then, they can  _ both  _ use them for their portfolios. 

“It’s because of the food truck. The smell is pulling me over this way. Like in the cartoons.” 

Seungmin laughs, but doesn’t waiver from the task at hand. He tries different angles and different shots. 

Hyunjin has done stuff like this before. You don’t get through three years of performing arts high school, then go onto design school, without getting roped into a few projects. Hell, he’s pretty sure he has an IMDB stub from back when he was “barista # 2,” the most pivotal character in that horrible short film that was shown at exactly one film festival in Seoul. 

Jinyoung always said he could be a model. Jinyoung said a lot of things.

He just sort of zones out when it happens. Now, his fingers caress soft flower petals. Roses growing outside are always so different looking from the bouquets you see in the store. These are smaller, flatter. Prettier, but different. 

Seungmin says something along the lines of, “that’s good!” Then he sneezes three times in rapid succession. “I forgot my allergy medicine,” but it’s like, the cutest thing. Like, what the fuck? He could listen to Seungmin sneeze on loop and--“Ah--” Sharp pain radiates on his index finger. 

“Are you alright?” Seungmin approaches and grabs his hand. It’s quick, authoritative, and natural in a sea of otherwise soft, almost awkward actions. It makes Hyunjin want to grab him and shake him, but like, in the best kind of way. “You have to be careful of thorns.” Then he honest to god extracts a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it to the miniscule droplet of blood pooled on Hyunjin’s finger. 

Aw, hell yeah. It’s a win for Hwang Hyunjin, sudden BL protagonist. 

“Ah, is that Hyunjin?” A voice calls out across the park. Hyunjin turns and lo and behold, Changbin and Felix walk toward them arm and arm carrying little red and white paper boats of tteokbokki from the food truck. A chill runs through his veins. 

He just kind of knows, because his friends are his friends. It's just some weird hazing ritual that they seem to have. They’re best friends he could ever find, but they’re going to absolutely ruin everything with their dicks and then pick up the pieces later. 

At this moment, it’s a lot easier to ignore his own participation in such events.

“Oh are you taking pictures?” Changbin strikes an exaggerated pose. “I can work the runway.” 

Seungmin laughs, and Hyunjin already knows. 

It’s a totally expected introduction for Seo Changbin, sudden BL antagonist. 

* * *

  
  


“What’s wrong Binnie?” 

Changbin goes through the motions of rolling his shoulders in a fake shiver. “I think I’m getting iced out,” he responds to Felix. Changbin flashes his instagram. 

“Ouch--” Felix responds. He’s rarely the one to make a call-out, but Changbin can see it in the front of his eyes, on the tip of his tongue. There’s  _ way  _ more that he wants to say. 

“Um,” Luckily, Minho’s there with the cold hard truth, the good and the bad. “Clinking glasses? Two of them?” He looks Changbin up and down, not bothering to hide the judgement in his expression, but not bothering either to save face with the person he’s been friends with for far longer. “He wants to make it a point that he’s on a date right now but,” Minho watches it play and replay a few times over. “It’s a fuckin boomerang man. He’s not  _ that  _ happy, if that like, makes you feel any better.” 

Changbin isn’t sure that it does. 

When he first met Hyunjin, and he explained how they’d all fucked, and dated, and fucked each other over, and made up, he didn’t understand. Now, he kind of does. Hyunjin has someone new, and it’s kind of a big deal. 

They’re a group of gay guys in Seoul, so that means that they’re really street magicians making damn sure they pull the right card every single fucking time. Hyunjin’s pulling a disappearing act. The goal? Get the guy, keep his perverted friends as far away from him as possible. 

And it fucking  _ hurts.  _ Like maybe, maybe he was stupid enough to believe that since Hyunjin wasn’t with Jinyoung anymore, and he wasn’t with Chan anymore…”I guess I just, I invited him to come out with us.” 

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” Minho snaps the sweat band that dangled loosely around his neck onto his forehead pushing up his bangs. “Hyunjin had a serious enough boyfriend for like...three years. He still came out all the time. He’s not a relationship hibernator.” Changing the subject, he adds, “Here, I brought you a gift for the occasion. Well, actually, it’s not a gift. Those are actually marked up at the store and they need to be back on the shelf by my shift tomorrow.” 

Minho tosses him a pair of pink knit leggings. Like it isn’t fucking obvious enough, three dudes at a jazzercise class aren’t super fucking gay. They should just get matching t-shirts that say gay across the front. He knows that Minho owns a bedazzler. 

“Are you gonna sell this stuff after we’re done?” 

“You should charge extra,” Felix suggests, arching his back into a perfect backbend. His navel peaks in the space between his crop top and his leggings. “Because you know, old nasty guys will pay for it.” 

God, the instructor is gonna fucking  _ hate  _ them. 

When class begins, he squares up and shimmies like his life depends upon it. 

In the back of his mind, he can recall all of the times that Hyunjin has harped at him, that he dances like someone who knows how to dance, but does it poorly on purpose. He thinks about how much Hyunjin would love this kind of thing, if he weren’t busy staring at his new boyfriend all the time. 

He asks Felix to take a video of him, tags it #bodyconversation, posts it to his story, and tries so hard not to look at the views. 

* * *

“Oh my god, did I hurt you? 

“Uh,” Hyunjin looks over his shoulder at Seungmin. Normally, he’d try to hide the combination of confusion and borderline disgust in his expression, because Seungmin is so excruciatingly, tooth rotting sweet but-- “Are you being obtuse for fun again?”

Seungmin swallows thickly, and it tells Hyunjing everything he needs to know. 

“That’s kind of the point of spanking.” 

“Oh yeah. I guess that’s right.” 

“Uh huh.” Hyunjin slides off of Seungmin’s thigh. 

In some ways, its reminiscent of when he first met Changbin, and every time they hung out seemed like he was hosting some kind of tutorial for how to be gay, except that tutorial had like 500 dislikes and three likes (all of them from Changbin and his alt accounts). 

And it’s so different Jinyoung, Jinyoung who acted like he invented sex, and Hyunjin, who, for many years believed him.

Okay maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about his ex, and his best friend, while he’s trying to fuck someone else. 

“Let’s try something else.” Seungmin looks like a kicked puppy when he says it. “Promise you, you’ll like it.” 

Hyunjin works his fingers into the knot of Seungmin’s microdot tie and knots it around his wrists and the bedpost. It’s the kind of thing that’s cliche, and always sounds better than it feels, but Seungmin looks at him with slack jawed wonder. 

Like  _ he  _ invented sex. 

Seungmin likes it very, very much when Hyunjin slicks his cock with lube and sinks down on him inch by inch by inch. 

“Holy fuck.” 

Hearing the obscenity feels like a prize hard earned with sweat, loneliness, and the burn in his muscles as he rides Seungmin. 

“Oh my god, you’re amazing. Fuck. You’re like so good.” 

Hyunjin tries to quiet him, first with hungry, open mouthed kisses. But when the cries and the praises still ring out, “So pretty. I think I love you,” Hyunjin finds it easier to simply slip his fingers inside of Seungmin’s mouth and make him suck. 

It earns him a long, low moan of satisfaction. 

When they’re finished, Seungmin finds his handkerchief from among their discarded clothes, and honest to god, pats the sweat from his forehead and clavicle with it. 

It’s a sweet, if not slightly uncomfortable gesture, to lay there sticky with his own cum while Seungmin wipes the sweat from his brow. 

Having the energy for little else, Seungmin falls asleep soon after. Deep, peaceful, and to Hyunjin, envious. He’s always been a light sleeper, and he’s never been comfortable falling asleep at other people’s houses. 

And it’s a little strange how he can never sleep at someone else’s house, but he almost always, always, always suggests going back to theirs. 

Instead of turning the bedside lamp off, Hyunjin reaches for the book that sits on the nightstand. Discarded, but not forgotten. Not a single page dog eared, but a metal clip marks the page where Seungmin left off last. 

His eyes skim the back of the book. An icy chill drifts across his lower back. He’s seen a copy of this book, well worn, the paper back version, on Jinyoung’s shelf so, so, many times. It’s just a fucking book, probably a best seller, probably a million or more copies out there, but the glossy cover shines in the lamplight, reflecting back into his soul and making him see things that he’d rather leave in the dark.

What bothers him isn’t that Seungmin told him he loved him. 

What bothers him isn’t that Seungmin really has no idea what he’s saying. 

What bothers him is how badly he wanted to say it back, and how frustrating it was to have the restraint not to. 

* * *

  
  


Changbin’s spidey-sense tingles when he gets the message, “hey, its Seungmin. You know, from the bar. And bowling. And karaoke.” 

How could Changbin forget. No really, even if he weren’t memorable for his taffy smile and sour cherry hair, the first (and last) message exchanged between them was the cursory, “seungmin” text after exchanging phone numbers. 

“Hey.” 

“A green bubble? Oh my god. Who uses an Android?” 

“Someone who has slightly different preferences than you I guess.” 

Seungmin doesn’t so much respond, as Changbin gets a text that says, “Seungmin laughed at, “Someone who has slightly different preferences than you I guess.”’ Since his phone won’t display the little animated reaction.

“At bowling you said that you knew of a really good used bookstore near Yonsei.” 

Changbin already has the address typed out in the chatbox when Seungmin double texts. “I’m not super familiar with that part of town. Would you go with me?” 

So Changbin’s spidey-sense continues to tingle….But Changbin hates spiders, so he squashes it, wads it up in tissue paper, and flushes it down the drain. “Sure.” 

Two hours later, he’s with Seungmin in a used book store near Yonsei. 

“Oh wow, this place is really great.” 

Changbin knows. It smells mildewed like old pages. There’s old carpet from wall to wall, and the floor bows in the center of the rooms, which wind back and forth throughout the older building that  _ used  _ to be a smaller apartment building in another life. That means that there are little isolated rooms, one for sci-fi, and one for mystery, and a big sprawling room for romance. 

Changbin’s spidey-sense still tingles. It’s like when you squish a bug, and that one, obstinate leg is still twitching in the bottom of the bathtub. Seungmin holds open the door for him, and gestures for him to walk ahead as they move through the rooms. 

He’s dressed like he’s going to court, or church, or anywhere but a cramped bookstore. Knit sweater, expensive looking dressy jeans, and shoes that he associates with a school uniform, if school uniforms were actually stylish in any way. 

And he’s so quick witted that every dry joke that Changbin makes, he’s able to fire back with some retort right away, and it makes Changbin smile so much that his face hurts. 

“They used to do a buyback program, but I’m pretty sure that the reason they don’t anymore is because I was making them lose money.” 

“Really?” 

“My second semester I had this internship where I was basically an unpaid secretary. I was so bored. I’d read one book a shift. Like three or four a week. Then weekends.” 

“Oh my god,” says Seungmin. “I can’t remember the last time I read something that wasn’t for school. To be fair, I have to read a lot.” Seungmin’s eyes widen as he scans the sea of titles before him. “You should pick something for me.” 

“Okay, uhm,” Changbin furrows his brow in thought and looks down the long row of books. Settling in front of one specific shelf, he thumbs through the spines of the various worn covers. “This is serious, got to get it right.” 

He selects a paperback off the shelf, and flashes the cover to Seungmin. The combination of the title  _ The Billionaire’s Pregnant Mistress _ and the cover of a heavily pregnant woman being embraced by a muscular, shirtless man, makes Seungmin’s eyebrows migrate into his hairline. 

And Changbin can’t help but laugh far too loudly for the quaint and quiet bookshop. 

“Ah, well I am looking for something to recite for my literature class.” Seungmin snaps the book from him and opens the book down the middle, “Sleep in my bed tonight,” he whispered, to my lips. Was I ready for that?” Seungmin’s face turns blush red, but he reads proudly from the text nonetheless. “My vagina was telling me that I was.” 

Changbin refuses to be beaten at his own game, so he snatches another paperback off the shelf,  _ Falling For the Bodyguard.  _ He skims the pages to find something good, but he’s nowhere as smooth at Seungmin in the delivery. “Oh, oh, oh “‘Thick dark lashes rested on her high cheek bones like fuzzy caterpillars floating in a bowl of sweet cream.” Interrupting himself with laughter the whole way until his face burns. 

They don’t make it much further in the store, sinking onto the carpeted floor with their backs to the shelf, blindly grabbing titles and reading the parts that were  _ supposed  _ to be sexy. 

And at a certain point, it no longer becomes a sense, something tingling and obscure in his peripherals. It rotates and rests in the foreground. Seungmin’s red smiling face...He keeps licking his lips and breaking away from Changbin’s gaze to look ever slightly lower. 

So it really shouldn’t surprise him when Seungmin leans in with his eyes closed, but it does. Changbin takes a half second to decide, because there’s a part of him that knows that he shouldn’t. 

But there’s also a part of him that wants to be wanted. There’s an ugly part of him that wants to be wanted by the person that Hyunjin wants. So the decision is made with his own closed eyes, pursed lips, and willful ignorance. 

Isn’t this...illegal? It feels illegal. Like, way more illegal than when he and Han hopped the turnstyle that one time just because they got caught up in a never ending game of, “no, you’re too spoiled and too rich to do that,” and that was  _ actually  _ illegal. 

But Seungmin’s lips are so soft and he tastes like cherry chapstick. He does this really amazing thing where he smiles into the kiss. He makes Changbin feel so warm. He can’t help but feel that Seungmin is just an idealized character from a young adult novel, that is if they made young adult novels about sloppy boycliques who can’t stop fucking each other. 

Seungmin, honest to god, threads their fingers together while they kiss. And when they part, he’s smiling at Changbin, just as sweetly as he kisses. “I’ve been wanting to do that since we met at the train station.” 

“Yeah,” There’s the problem right? Murder isn’t wrong  _ because  _ it’s illegal. Murder is illegal because it’s wrong. “Me too.” 

  
  


* * *

Hyunjin’s seen it as an outsider dozens of times. There’s a certain heavy, sinking feeling when you play voyer to someone else’s sinking relationship. He can remember watching Han flirt with Changbin and Chan in slow motion on that fateful night that set his friends’ breakup into motion. 

There’s a certain light, out of body feeling when you play voyer to your own sinking relationship. He can remember watching he and Jinyoung grow distant. He knows this  _ exact _ feeling. It’s happening right in front of him, but it doesn’t seem real. Feels more like shitty outtakes from the movie that is his life. 

Chan invited them to a gig. Even Hyunjin admitted they were worth the second hand smoke that came with slinking into the back of a shitty underground venue. They were worth the acrid taste of flat beer. Worth the ringing in their ears. 

Whatever Chan, Changbin, and Han couldn’t do in a relationship, they could absolutely do on stage. Just being friends with them for so long was absolutely wild to see. 

But Seungmin  _ loved  _ them. 

Wanted to go to all of their shows. 

His whole face lit up when their set ended. 

And all of that was more or less okay until tonight when Changbin says, “hey, you did make it!” 

“I  _ told  _ you we’d be here,” Seungmin’s whole face lights up. 

_ Told.  _ Like they spoke often outside of crowded venues. 

“I shot some more pictures too. If you wanted to go through them sometime and use them on your page.” 

“Yeah! Oh, would you pick one for me Seungmin? Make sure that I look cool?” 

  
  


* * *

“Hey, I don’t want to fight with you ever. Least of all over a guy, but do you mind backing the fuck off?” 

Changbin stares at the text, crosses and uncrosses his eyes as he tries to process the messages on screen. It’s almost like his actions have consequences and honestly? That seems just a little bit unfair.

Hyunjin double texts, “I wouldn’t ask if it were just anybody. I just think it’s going really well, and I like him a lot.”

Hyunjin triple texts, “I know that you guys have been fucking around. That hurts.” 

Changbin knows that he’s in the wrong here. What he’s doing, indefensible. 

But he tries nevertheless, with a shield made of lies from deep within the recesses of his memory. It’s dark, and it’s ugly, and it’s been festering with infection for well over a year now. “You literally used me to test out if you wanted to break up with Jinyoung.” Changbin double texts, because in that moment, he realizes he’s been repressing that knot in his throat, that sinking feeling in his stomach, that he felt whenever he saw them together, for a really long time now. “And that hurt too.”

“Seriously?” And then, “Fuck you Changbin.” 

  
  


* * *

They don’t talk again for a long time. It hurts more than Hyunjin ever imagined. 

* * *

  
  


They don’t talk for months. Whatever it is that he and Seungmin are, it lasts for weeks. 

Seungmin likes art, likes photography, likes tinkering at his keyboard in his underwear. But for someone so creative, it seems to be this strange kind of formulaic thing. Given whatever variables: subject matter, scenery, lighting, color, there’s an equation there. And if he can figure out how to do it, he can complete the function. 

It’s almost like he’s that way with people too. He bounced from Hyunjin, to him, to Younghyun in the blink of an eye. 

It’s not like he’s even malicious about it. 

So Changbin doesn’t have the guy. He doesn’t have his best friend. And even when he’s surrounded by people. Even when he’s up on stage with Chan and Han, or out at a club with Felix and Minho, he feels so lonely. 

* * *

Christmas time is always weird for him, which is why he supposes that’s why he likes to spend it with Felix and Chan. It’s weird for them too. Different reasons, but still weird, so they’ve banded together  _ again  _ for the Christmast that they  _ want  _ to have. And like, Chan and Felix’s parents are hundreds of miles away from home, how could they spend Christmas all alone? Even the most heartless of monsters (Minho) can’t help but indulge them. 

Chan’s apartment is small.  _ Cozy.  _

“Hey, I got something for you,” Minho says as he shrugs off his coat. From his bag, he extracts something green that looks like a blanket. He loops some of the strings and parts the cloth to reveal a large, green hanging macrame plant hanger. “You know, so you can use it as a Christmas tree.” 

Chan’s face lights up like its...well..Christmas morning. 

Chan busies himself with hanging it from the ceiling, and placing his single, sad looking house plant inside. He takes the garland he’d been wearing around his neck and loops it around the hanging tendrils. 

“Hem hem,” Hyunjin turns, and in the commotion, Changbin arrived. Without all the attention focused on him, he’s decided that it’s time to command it. 

He’s wearing an ugly Christmas sweater, this too undoubtedly withheld from one of the many bins and bags that come through the vintage store where Minho works. After all, that’s where Hyunjin got the monstrosity that he wears now. A puffy sweater vest, probably meant for a woman, embroidered with cardinals and snow flakes. 

Changbin’s wearing a headband with mistletoe attached to the top. 

“Minho, it’s tradition.” And he puckers his lips in the comic grotesque way that Changbin does when he tries to get a kiss. 

It’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen when Minho denies him, and Changbin retaliates, “it’s Christmas, you dick,” and tries to pinch his nipple. 

“I’ll give you a smooch.” Han puckers up, and Changbin pulls his santa hat down over his face. 

Making his rounds around the room, it is inevitable when Changbin stops in front of him. It’s like he can feel winter show up to the party uninvited and spread a chill into the room. Changbin doesn’t know what to do, and Hyunjin doesn’t know what to do, and maybe the only thing there’s left  _ to do  _ is take a page from the Seo Changbin handbook of clownery. 

“I’d give you a kiss Changbin, but--” Oh, man, they’re done. For real this time. There’s no making up from this. He laughs before he can even start talking. “Binnie, I always heard that you were supposed to kiss  _ under  _ the mistletoe. But,” He bops the top of the headband and then draws the distance in height between himself and Changbin. “The mistletoe is under me.” And he laughs even harder when Changbin’s expression melts into a scowl. 

“Do you think santa’s gonna bring you shit if you act like that?” 

Changbin goes for his chest, maybe to grab and twist his nipple, or slap him. Hyunjin simply splays his palm across the crown of Changbin’s head to hold him at a distance. 

It’s like pressing a big reset button. 

Changbin siddles up to him and strikes up a conversation like things were  _ never  _ out of place. “Okay, so I got Felix for secret santa and--” 

Hyunjin, naturally upset at this egregious faux paux, spittakes lychee soju. “You’re  _ not  _ supposed to tell me you troglodyte.” 

“No I just can’t tell him.” 

“No, now I know you didn’t get  _ me  _ for secret santa. It’s like one less secret.” 

“O-oh,” Changbin looks at him thoughtfully, like the gears are turning, but its not quite hitting home. 

The rest of the night unfolds as it should. Felix cooks them some meat on Chan’s indoor grill, and Chan eats too much of it. Seungmin got Minho for secret santa, and apparently a 12 pack of tube socks are the final straw in an already strained friendship. 

“That’s it. We’re done. We can be colleagues. Acquaintances. But not friends.” 

Minho got Hyunjin an overdyed beanie, a rare colorway in an obscure line that he’d never pay the resale rate for, but Minho could find for a fraction of the price. 

It turns out that Changbin got Felix a pizza stone, and apparently Changbin was having a last minute cloud of self doubt because he, “just got Felix a giant fucking rock for Christmas.”

Chan gets Changbin a bracelet. 

Everything as it should be. 

When he’s nice and sloshed, he walks back to the bathroom to take a piss only to find the door locked. So he sprawls out onto Chan’s bed, which is covered in their winter coats, and waits. 

After a few moments, the toilet flushes from inside, and someone emerges from the bathroom. “Hey,” rings out the familiar gruff of Changbin’s voice. 

“Hey,” Hyunjin looks up at him. His head feels heavy, and his vision blurry. 

Changbin climbs into bed with him. Hyunjin feels so drunk and heavy, he  _ can’t  _ move. 

“Sorry about your boyfriend.” The sound of everyone else in the next room drunkenly yelling the lyrics to Christmas carols on the portable karaoke machine mutes the sound of Changbin’s voice. Makes the words easier to take in. 

They slide around on top of, and push aside, and make impromptu pillows out of everyone’s discarded coats. 

“Sorry about  _ your _ boyfriend,” Hyunjin responds. He dumped them  _ both.  _

“Oh so now neither of us claim him...How can someone be so sweet, and also such a dick?” 

Hyunjin sucks in air through his teeth in apprehension. “I have no idea, because I really don’t think it’s like, purposeful.” 

“Oh my god.” Changbin hides his eyes in the crook of his elbow as he talks. The room spins as Hyunjin watches him. “He made me feel bad even when he was the one breaking up with me.” 

“Right? Those puppy dog eyes?”

After that, they’re actually, sort of, almost, able to talk about it. Even if it did take a few bottles to get there. 

“I missed you,” Changbin confesses. 

“Seeing you with him pissed me off so bad, but I missed you. So that pissed me off even more,” Hyunjin admits. “I thought a lot about what you said...About Jinyoung. You’re right. I’d just like, literally never broken up with anyone before. I’d been with him for like, two years.” 

“That doesn’t make it okay.” 

“You didn’t let me finish.” At some point in the bickering they grab each other’s hands. Disclaimers are insisted upon before every statement, because they’re drunk, inarticulate, and begging to be misunderstood. “I’m sorry that I hurt you.” 

“I’m sorry that I hurt you too. I knew you were into Seungmin. I guess. I mean, I’d just got out of a weird break up too. I have made like, negative three good decisions in the past six months.” 

“So you’ve made three bad decisions.” 

“Shut up.” And then, because it’s Changbin, and he’ll say just the right thing to make you feel better just a few seconds after trying to insult you. “You know like, you’re allowed to feel sad about Jinyoung. And Seungmin too.” 

Fantastic. He has permission to be a sad Christmas bastard. That’s what everybody wants “Cool.” It’s not that Hyunjin isn’t convinced. Changbin is usually right about these things. It’s just weird, and it’s just right, to be having this conversation with his best friend after months of radio silence when they’re snuggled up in the bed of a guy that they’ve  _ both  _ slept with. “I can’t believe Chan still wears this cologne,” he murmurs into the bed spread. 

“It does smell like him, huh?” But then Changbin selects a vintage cornflower blue coat and inhales deeply, “this one has to be Minho’s right? It smells like hippy.” 

“How would you even know what a hippy smells like?” Hyunjin laughs. 

Hyunjin moves his mouth as if he wanted to speak, but the word’s don’t come. 

“What?” Changbin asks. 

“Nothing.” It’s going well, so he shouldn’t even  _ go there.  _ “I mean. I guess. Did Seungmin ever like..wipe your sweat off when you were done having sex with his handkerchief?” 

“What? Changbin laughs. “Um, no.” 

“Oh, I guess I’m just really sweaty.” 

“That’s um..strange, even for you, my moist mate.”

“Ew. Changbin, please.” 

“My condensating companion.” 

“I can’t believe we’re fighting again, and we only made up for like three minutes.” 

“My perspiring pal,” Changbin edges closer to him on the bed so that he’s leaning over Hyunjin. The stupid sprig of missletoe hangs over his head. Changbin can be the most irritating human on the planet. He missed this. 

Hyunjin leans up to pluck the headband off of Changbin’s head. Changbin doesn’t pull back, tell him no. Doesn’t lean forward to try to demand a kiss, wet lipped and cartoonish. Doesn’t point out that he’s  _ actually  _ underneath it now. 

He’s laughing. Changbin is too.A warm glow settles into his cheeks making him realize that for the last few weeks he’s been quite cold. 

“We’re good now?” 

It just makes sense to lean up, and plant the most undignified kiss to the tip of Changbin’s nose. “No. But we will be.” 

* * *

“No, it’s cause, new year, new me bitch,” and Hyunjin flips his hair to punctuate the statement. They all stand in the weird  _ friends at party drinking circle of protection _ . Changbin’s face is buried into Hyunjin’s puffer coat because somehow they all ended up at a rooftop party, which is all well and good except it’s New Years Eve, and no matter how many outdoor heaters are propped up in this place, it’s still January. 

Changbin echoes him, “yeah, bitch,” but lets Hyunjin take the lead. After all, this was Hyunjin’s idea. Changbin just followed suit with a few thousand won of hair dye for them both from the beauty supply store. 

“I like it,” Felix adds. 

“You’ve been blonde for years.” Minho rebutts. 

“Look, we had to show the world that Changjin is back okay? Back and ready to fuck it up. Everybody knows Changbin and Hyunjin the raven haired power bottoms. That’s fucking gone. We’re honey haired tops now!” Changbin insists, arms wrapped around Hyunjin’s middle. 

“Yeah, because tops everywhere say things like, “honey-haired--” Minho lays into them.

“Yeah, okay man. Whatever you say,” Han butts in with his patronizing English voice. 

“Sticking our dicks into things,” Hyunjin continues. 

“Thrusting,” says Changbin. 

“Just really pounding.” At this point, they're yelling at each other, not berating the others.

“Opening jars.” 

“I already open jars!” 

“Yeah, cause you’re a top!” Hyunjin insists.

“Yeah,” that’s when he realizes that they’ve somehow drifted out of the protective circle of their friend group. The group has moved on to some other conversation. In the kind of mobius strip of forget-remember that comes with too much alcohol, he remembers why he came over and started pouting into Hyunjin’s coat in the first place. To draw attention away from the fact that--“Hey, how are you--”

“I swear to god Changbin, if one more person comments about how miserable I look, I’m gonna pick them up and hurl them over the railing of this rooftop. So if that’s what you’re about to do--” 

Jinyoung’s here. 

Which makes sense when he thinks about it. Cause Chan put this together, and said it was something that Bam was doing with his friends and--Hyunjin’s a fucking bad ass, honey-haired top with balls of steel for being here. 

“Yeah sure,” Hyunjin laughs “I’m a badass.” 

Oh fuck he said most of that shit about being a bad ass out loud. 

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t okay. I mean that.” Hyunjin purses his lips like he wants to say more. Not just with Hyunjin, but with all of them, he feels like he’s the crowbar. The muscle strongarming out everybody’s feelings with a goofy smile and words so cringe inducing that they have no choice other than to confront their own feelings rather than let him go on embarrassing himself. 

“Remember when you told me there were like, 20 gay people in Seoul?” 

“Yeah, and I sometimes I really hate being right.” 

Why is he even talking right now? “I hated it when you were with that bastard.” Maybe because he knows how this works. He and Hyunjin get close, they do something to fuck it up, repeat over the next few months. He likes where they are right now. Still feels like the tenuous truce that he has with Hyunjin could erupt at any second but,--

“Really?” 

“Yeah.” He’s already started, might as well keep talking. “He never did anything weird. Actually, he was always really nice when he was around. You just always looked kind of sad whenever he was around, or like..I could tell when you got a text message from him. It just disrupted whatever good you were feeling.” 

“Yeah, well like you know you were the reason I broke up with him.” 

“You’ve never said it like that before.” And he doesn’t particularly like it when Hyunjin says it like that  _ right now.  _

“I mean like, unconsciously. And consciously I guess. I don’t know dude. I never really thought about being with anyone else, but I knew things were wrong. Then I met you and you were so fucking sexy. And then, I don’t fucking know. You noticed all these little details after like a month that he didn’t notice in over a year. And then like. Like, if my friend could give me that much, why did I need a boyfriend?” 

Why does that somehow make it worse? There’s a lump in Changbin’s throat, one that isn’t easily washed down with alcohol no matter how hard he tries. “That’s fuckin gay dude.” 

“So gay.” 

“Hey,” it’s probably something that he shouldn’t say. Cause like, they’re already past it, and maybe bringing it up is weird. But he’s already a number of drinks in, so it’s already too late cause he’s admitting, “I’m really glad we’re like, cool again.” 

“Yeah. Me too.” Hyunjin’s mouth stays open, like he wants to keep talking. But he skips a beat, raspberry colored tongue lapping at his lower lip as he tries to decide what to say next. “I’ve had a lot of arguments with friends before. Most of the time, it just blows over. I get unmad, and things go back to normal. But with you they didn’t go back to normal.” 

“You’re actually the first fight I’ve ever had with a friend, because everyone really loves me.” 

“Dick.” Hyunjin tries to pinch him even though he’s wearing a puffy coat. Changbin responds by trying to hit him. Hyunjin stops him by holding him back at arms, length the heel of his palm digging into his his face. “I was gonna say, I’ve never had to like, work at being friends with someone before.” 

For whatever reason, that drains all the rancor from them both. He drops back, and goes back to looking up at Hyunjin. “Yeah.” Hell, he can’t really think of any relationships he’s like worked on before. Neither he or Chan really gave it a shot, and after Chan, he never kept anyone around for long enough. “It’s worth it though.” 

Hyunjin smiles at him. “Yeah.” 

When everyone gathers round for overpriced prosecco in cheap plastic flutes, his palms feel itchy. When they start counting down his throat feels like it has a lump in it. Everybody’s paired off. There’s a moment there when the fireworks start popping off like little bullets of time, and everyone’s kissing. It lasts only seconds, but it feels like hours. And he’s not sure if its the right thing to do, but it feels like the last year and a half of their lives didn’t exist. Just Chan’s bed covered in coats at the Christmas party and now. So he pulls on Hyunjin’s lapels. Hyunjin closes his eyes like he accepts it. For a moment, Changbin wonders if the ghost of a kiss that he brushes across his cheek is a disappointment. 

But Hyunjin looks at him like he's really, really happy.

* * *

Changbin shivers at the cold and informs him matter of factly--“I can’t believe you wanna pay forty-five thousand won just to go on one ride.” Changbin complains, and contradictorily, as always, bounces up and down in excitement at the prospect. 

Sure, this is the guy that spent almost a hundred thousand won on lamb last year,  _ just  _ for himself for his own birthday, but okay. He’s the weird one. 

“Thirty-eight,” Hyunjin corrects. “It's after 4pm so there’s a discount.” He says fishing for his wallet. 

“Let me pay.” 

“No.” 

“It’s your birthday. I can’t let you pay for something for me on your birthday.” 

“Yeah I can. My mom sent me some cash.” 

It goes quet between them for a moment. He’s used to the silence from others whenever he brings up home, or mom and dad, but it’s still jarring for whatever reason when it comes from Changbin. He guesses it’s because Changbin knows the most. So when there’s details he still doesn’t know, or hasn’t filled in, or  _ knows  _ but still just doesn’t know how to feel or what to say, it takes Hyunjin by surprise. 

“She did?” 

“Yeah,” Hyunjin supplies. “I think that there’s a ceiling on how long you can be angry about your kid running out on his arranged marriage to go be gay and do crimes.” 

“I thought maybe,” Changbin looks at him, face all drawn up and miserable, the way that he does when he knows he’s about to say something, hasn’t thought of the best, most sensitive way to do it yet, but will do it anyway. Like he might be sick if he actually gets it wrong. “You were excommunicated or something.” 

“Not really.” Hyunjin responds. “They’ve wanted me to visit for awhile now. I don’t think I”m ready.” 

“Oh,” Changbin, for all his doubts, usually does know how to say just the right thing though. He’s good at that. “Maybe it doesn’t matter so much if you’re ready. What if it was enough knowing that it’s there waiting.” 

“Like a hot pocket in the back of the freezer, for when you come home super fucked up.” It’s kind of nice just to hang out like this, only the two of them. Even though they’ve reconciled, been good for a while, it still feels like they’re making up for lost time. Later, they’ll go out together as a group, get drunk, dance. He won’t spend half as long talking to the people he really wants to see, and twice as long talking to the people he doesn’t care about. 

But right now? He can just hang out with his best friend. 

“This is kind of metaphorical isn’t it?” Changbin asks. 

“Huh?” 

“An aging crone going to an amusement park to hold on to the shreds of his youth as the sands of time was out with the tide of--” 

“You’re literally older than me.” 

Hyunjin briskly passes by several food carts, stalls with carnival games, and souvenirs. The park is tinged with gray-yellow light, the kind that only happens when the sun shouts to part the clouds, and the clouds never fully relent. It feels like he should be a little boy pulling his mom forward, not a grown man pulling Changbin. It feels like he’s running through a dream, trying to get to the part that happened right before he woke up so he can start dreaming again from that point forward. 

Pressing pause and letting it play, he stops right in the middle of the park where in the center rests a carousel. 

Between the cold, and the dreary weather, the park is all but empty.

“You know how like this is in every k-pop music video?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I always wanted to go to it and pretend I was an idol. My mom would take me every year on my birthday and I’d scream the mangled lyrics to girl group songs.” 

“Oh, she had to know.” 

“She should’ve,” Hyunjin responds. 

Changbin and Hyunjin walk around the carousel, their winter boots echoing off of the empty, almost cavernous space in between carved wooden horses. 

Hyunjin inspects each horse carefully, examining the dappled patterns painted on their backs, the yellows and reds painted on their saddles, as if simply looking at one of these horses would unlock a memory, or give him an answer to a question that he doesn’t really know the answer to. 

He settles for the single black horse that leads the carousel and hoists himself upward with ease. 

Changbin doesn’t fare so easily. The horse next to Hyunjin’s is elevated higher, making it more difficult for an already diminutive Changbin to reach. 

“Here,” Hyunjin raises, offers his hand to Changbin, and tries to hoist him up. The positioning is awkward. He probably does more harm than good, after all Changbin is strong enough to lift himself upward, but...It feels kind of good to help Changbin with something again. 

It was almost like Changbin couldn’t walk when they met. But at some point, Changbin let go of his hand and started running, his wobbly steps turning into a skilled and even stride. 

Cheerful calliope music rings through the air, drowning out the sound of other rides and music around them. Lights flicker on, blinding at first and then blinding into a single golden ring as the carousel makes its rounds. 

Changbin’s looking at him the whole time. He can feel the heat of his eyes on him, even when Hyunjin himself doesn’t return his gaze. 

The horses jolt to life and dash forward in a race that has no true end. 

“You keep acting like you want to say something, but don’t know what.” And the very idea is terrifying, because that  _ doesn’t  _ happen to Changbin. 

“Ah,” Changbin takes a sip of coffee from the styrofoam cup and winces. All they have is the oily kind of non-dairy creamer that can sit on a shelf and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. But they  _ had  _ to add it to their coffee to cut the bitter taste. 

Hyunjin sips too in solidarity. 

There’s no true destination as they wander aimlessly through the park now. Cold nips at their noses and their ears. It’s always kind of a toss up whether or not he’ll have a lovely spring birthday, or a cold and dreary day. It would never come up in conversation, but if he were asked, Hyunjin would say with some certainty that he really prefers the rainy years. His birthday always comes with feeling. All of them, bound into one tight knot that he doesn’t know how to untie. There’s always this great amount of pressure to be happy, smiling, and Hyunjin, more often than not, is those things on his birthday. 

But for times like this, when he feels melancholy, even during what is supposed to be a wholly happy time, he’s grateful for the clouds and petchior. 

Changbin seems grateful for it too, it seems. “Is it snowing?” Changbin asks. 

It's at that moment that Hyunjin looks up and spies a few fat flakes, some of them melting on Changbin’s nose on contact. Others catch his eyelashes. 

“Last year we ate out on the patio and you were worried about getting a sunburn.” 

“Yeah.” And then, “Changbin, what’s bothering you?”

“Okay,” Changbin breathes heavily. “I got you this birthday gift, and I was gonna let you open it on the train and stuff since we had seats and everything. But then like, I couldn’t find it in my pocket, and I thought I lost it. When we were standing in line, I was messing around with my zipper and realized I had it in my inside pocket. So I was stressed about losing your birthday gift. Then I was stressed about when to give it to you without like, making it a thing.” Changbin spends a lot of time looking away from Hyunjin as he speaks, despite keeping him warm with his gaze the entire time they were on the carousel. 

“Oh my god. Just give it to me.” Hyunjin makes grabby hands for Changbin’s coat. 

“Fine,” Changbin unzips his pocket and thrusts a small bubble mailer into his hands. A perfect score for presentation. Really. He extracts from the mailer a long clip made of dark wood. Something iridescent and shiny inlaid at the end. ‘When we were at the beauty supply store to get stuff to touch up our hair you said the other stuff was too girly. This looks nice and manly.” 

That’s when it clicks for Hyunjin. It’s a hair stick. “Oh,” and only in Changbin’s world is inlaid abalone manly. Well...Maybe his world too. 

“I mean, your hair is getting so long. I don’t know, you’re probably just gonna go cut it off tomorrow.” 

“No,” Hyunjin pulls the beanie that Minho got him for Christmas off of his head. ‘It’s really sweet.” Instantly, it feels like his ears are gonna freeze off. Doesn’t stop him from putting his hair up into a very messy bun and shoving the pin through it. 

This is dangerous. 

Changbin’s been in love with him. 

He’s been in love with Changbin. 

But he doesn’t really think that it’s ever happened at the same time before. 

* * *

“As you know my life is a constant struggle.” 

“Sysphisian some would say.” 

“Bless you. Nothing is ever easy. I’ve fought tooth and nail for what I’ve got.” 

“Were they out of white chocolate syrup again?” Changbin comments dryly before taking a sip of his own latte. Much like they have a regular place to have dinner and go clubbing, they have a regular coffee shop. And it  _ used  _ to be  _ Roasters  _ up north of the university, but then Jisung got a job at Astronomers’ Cafe and they’ve never looked back. 

Yes, they have to deal with bad art school paintings of bowls of kimchi-jigae. Glued to the canvas, as if they were items in the soup, a doll’s high heel, a heart shaped bead, a carousel horse charm. 

Maybe it’s  _ because  _ he’s not an art student, not in spite of, that he understands that the painting is really, really bad. 

But the drinks are cheap and the refills are free. 

Changbin makes broad strokes across his keyboard as Hyunjin talks, not really certain that he’s really writing anything worth submitting for this assignment. 

“And now that I have something good, something truly good in my sights, it’s going to be snatched away from me.” 

“Oh, oatmilk. They’re totally out of oatmilk.” 

“My friend lives in one of the non government controlled Hanok.” Hyunjin explains. Older, traditional housing that’s been abandoned or sleek highrises crammed tight with tiny studio apartments. “It’s been busted up into little apartments.” 

“That’s so weird.” 

“Not like, in other places.” Hyunjin rolls his eyes at him as if he’s committed a rather egregious crime for not reading real estate magazines in his free time like Hyunjin does. “That means the rent isn’t open bidding. It’s fixed, and apparently the landlady is completely out of touch and has no idea there are thousands of people,” 

“Hipsters.” Changbin corrects. “Only hipsters wanna live in hundred year old houses with leaky pipes and drafty windows.”

“Thousands of people,” Hyunjin continues as if he didn’t hear Changbin at all. It's what he often does when he’s impassioned. “Want to live in a place like that? So the rent is actually really good for what it is. He introduced me and everything, but my lease is up next month, and he  _ has  _ to stay there until the end of his in September because he doesn’t wanna pay double rent. It’s not fair. That Hanok is mine and it’s what I deserve.” 

Changbin notices the sparkle in Hyunjin’s eyes. He’s probably thinking about throw pillows right now. Or string lights. So he just blurts out the first thing that comes to mind, which is, “just sign the lease. Stay at my house for two months.” 

“Wait, what, really? 

“Yeah. I mean...Why not?” 

“I don’t know, that’s a little...close isn’t it?” Ah, he gets what Hyunjin is alluding to. 

“I’m pretty sure my mom gets exponentially more upset every time I remind her that we’re  _ not  _ dating.” 

“Yeah, if i’m gonna be roommates with Mrs. Seo, I’m gonna have to ask for recommendations.” 

Changbin didn’t think it would be possible, but he actually has had experiences far more embarrassing than _ “that one time he accidentally outing himself to his sister while she was at a bachelorette party” _ and “t _ hat one time he kinda sorta almost lost a toy inside himself and calling Hyunjin for help _ .” One morning he asked to use his mom’s Ipad. He unlocked the screen to find the nastiest BL Manwha left open. That was the most embarrassing moment of his life. 

“Please don’t.” 

“Okay, but I’ve been looking for something new since  _ Boy School _ ended.” 

“Keep looking.” 

“Fine,” Hyunjin glowers. “If you’re gonna be like that, it’s gonna be the worst two month long sleepover ever.” 

* * *

Changbin is a bit of a mama’s boy. He’s always kind of known that about Changbin, and has really reaped the benefits over the last few years. Dinners and nice gifts at Christmas and his birthday, she’s more or less taken him in. Hyunjin supposes that he would be too if his mom were like this. His mom isn’t cold, really they’re actually pretty good all things considered. It’s just that, he hasn’t felt comfortable letting her do anything close to doting in years. 

The fact that Changbin is a bit of a mama’s boy is really hammered home when he shows up on the Seo’s doorstep with his luggage in hand. 

The fact that Changbin is a bit of a mama’s boy is really,  _ really  _ hammered home on his birthday. 

After dinner, Changbin’s mom procures a shining blue box with gilded letters seemingly from thin air. It’s the kind of domestic magic that only moms are privy to. 

Changbin’s mom kisses Changbin on the temple after he blows out the candles. His sister, just as graceful as he is, somehow ends up smudging the border of the cake as she tries to serve, and makes up for it by wiping the excess icing across Changbin’s face. 

And Hyunjin? Where Changbin’s family probably expects him to join in, especially given his commitment to tormenting his friend at any chance, he simply watches Changbin. 

The first few times Changbin had him over, he thought that it was about the money. Because apparently, even in their friend group, “let me get this one” Chris Bang and expensive girl Lee Minho, Changbin is still an anomaly. And yeah, at the beginning he spent a lot of time trying not to stare while taking it all in. Trying not to judge, while letting envy slowly take root. A tentativeness crept into his typical confidant stance. Feet placed a broad shoulder’s length apart, he’d crumple in on himself trying not to break some bauble or scuff the floor. But now he realizes how stupid that is. They’d replace it a thousand times over. 

What makes him the most uncomfortable about the Seo residence is the love. It’s given freely in spite of the fact that Changbin’s dad is  _ never  _ around. It’s given freely in spite of the fact that apparently Mrs. Seo had Changbin’s sister when she was eighteen, and the only reason it was okay for Mr. Seo is because she was an heiress. 

There’s probably a thousand better times and places and spaces to do this, but Hyunjin’s lungs hurt and his head feels like it’s under water. It would be a lie to say that his own issues with is family is only thing that separates him from going back into the kitchen and celebrating his best friend’s birthday. But this is one little thing that he can control. One thing that he knows isn’t going to be made worse by doing it, or dealing with it, because he already hit the floor and there’s really only one way to go up with his parents. Up. 

So he flops onto Changbin’s bed on his back and prays for voicemail. But when there’s another voice on the other end of the line, so foreign and so familiar, he’s forced to clear his throat and eke out in a scratchy voice, “Hey mom.” 

At some point Changbin enters the room and asks him in a whisper, “Hyunjin are you okay?” His expression grows concerned when he realizes what it is that Hyunjin’s doing. 

When Changbin climbs into bed with him and holds his hand, it makes the phone call just a little easier. 

* * *

War doesn’t end. World hunger  _ isn’t  _ solved. There’s still telemarketer calls, and cold calling salesmen, and perfume ladies at the kiosks in malls that follow you down the aisle. And it’s strange that the world doesn’t get dramatically better,when Chan finally asks Felix to be his boyfriend. 

Volcanoes don’t erupt. Acid rain doesn’t pour down. Locusts don’t shred the trees to bits. Caller ID still keeps working. Read receipts can still be turned off. And it’s strange, not just that the world doesn’t end, but also that the world doesn’t stop at all when Felix says no. 

“Holy shit dude. That’s got to be rough.” 

“I kind of deserve it,” Chan’s moment of reflection is nothing but quiet. He’s ripping the cord on the rowing machine like his life depends on it. Like he’s only going to be satisfied with that conclusion if he pulls a muscle. 

The sound of the stacked weights hit the other stacked weights in perfectly timed clicks. Changbin finds it difficult to focus on the free weights in his hands, so they just drag his arms down, stretching him outward like taffy. 

“Did he say why? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that he’s like, in love with you.” But Changbin thinks he knows why. Changbin doesn’t think he was explicitly part of the problem, but maybe was a cog in the dysfunctional machine that was Chan’s dysfunctional love life. 

“I don’t know. I told him how I felt. How i’d felt that way for a really long time. He looked happy for about, maybe a whole second. Then, he asked, if that were true, why I only just got around to telling him.” 

Felix has a point, and he’s kind of proud of his friend for saying it. Honestly? As much as they were all rooting for them to be together, they all wanted Felix to give Chan a piece of his mind first. 

“Like I think it would almost be better if he didn’t have feelings for me. But just this idea that he did? And because I never talked to him about it, I hurt him?” 

“Right.” Something about the way that Chan says it makes his own stomach hurt. That’s always kind of been the problem with him and Chan. They’re really, really similar, and when they notice it, it’s even worse. 

“I don’t know dude. You’ve changed in the last year or so. The fact that we’re even having this conversation. You talking to me and asking my advice about your fuckboy ways? That’s growth. And I think if Felix realized or let himself see more of that, he’d understand why its such a big deal.” 

* * *

“No, no no, not like it’s a cock,” Felix grabs the flour sifter from him and demonstrates for the second or third time a side to side motion. “Like this, okay?” 

Usually he’s not this clueless in the kitchen. It’s been two weeks, and he’s already gotten hooked on mama Seo’s home cooking. Grilled meat, stew, hand rolls, all on speed dial from the restaurant a few blocks away. It has three dollar signs next to the name on Yelp. 

“Remember when this used to be fun, and we were both bad at this together? Or...when you really got good, so the only thing I had to do was sit there and watch?” 

Felix looks up from his own bowl. He’s whisking some kind of reduction for the frosting. He smiles at Hyunjin. “Yeah, but this is really complex, and this is the closest I’ll get to growing a third and fourth arm.” 

For a moment, the only sound in Felix’s apartment is the rhythmic  _ clink clink clink  _ of the whisk against the bowl. He likes Felix’s apartment because it’s so, almost cartoonishly, normal. Like, somewhere in between his own pristine,  _ Queer Eye  _ wannabe looking apartment, and Han’s filthy hole in the wall, there’s this. A half dozen shoes cascade out from the corner by the door. There’s junkmail piled up on the table covered with a cute yellow table cloth. A normal, well adjusted twenty-two year old gay guy lives here. 

“So like, you wanna talk about it?” 

“What if you waited for something. Like every day, for like, years. Then it happened, but it wasn’t...Like when it finally happened you realized that you got so wrapped up in waiting that you didn’t see all the little things that were wrong?” 

“Damn.” 

“I am,” Felix dips a spoon into the liquid, tastes it, crosses his eyes, and then looks around at the chemistry set of extracts before them. He reaches for vanilla. “I am like, you know in love with him.” 

“So what’s next?” 

“Try this,” Felix tucks his hair behind his ear and offers him a spoonful and looks at him expectantly. 

“Yeah, that’s good.” 

“I wish you weren’t such a baby about food. I’ve been wanting to try this red wine reduction butter cream.” 

Hyunjin pantomimes gagging in disgust. 

“I think, If I had my way...If he would like, apologize...To Changbin, to Han, maybe even to me, for just like, being an insufferable fuckboy, I’d feel a lot better. But, I guess it wouldn’t mean as much then right? Like you need to apologize for being a dick and then we can fuck.”

“No, maybe not,” Hyunjin thinks about it though. Chan would do it in a heartbeat. 

“But I guess I never said anything either. Maybe I should apologize too.” 

“You didn’t go around fucking all of his friends while keeping your feelings inside.” 

“I did fuck around though, while keeping my feelings inside.” Felix was just way, way more discreet about it than the rest of them. 

“What are you gonna do?”

“I guess talk about it. Tell him why I’m pissed off and maybe see if we can move forward. I hope we can.” Then Felix asks the question that he’d hoped they’d avoid. “What are you gonna do?” 

“What?”

Felix looks at him, and he knows that look. Cocked brow, pinched mouth, the “ _ oh you’re stupid”  _ look. He’s dumped men before for giving it to him. If it were anyone other than Felix, he wouldn’t get away with it. 

“I really don’t know.” The taste of frosting is thick on his tongue preventing the thousands of thoughts that swirl in his mind right now from being spoken. All he knows for certain is that he  _ doesn’t  _ want to end up in Felix or Chan’s position. He doesn’t want everything to be  _ so  _ close, only to have it never blossom because they were too late, too emotionally incompetent, too stupid. 

He wants Changbin to keep being in love with him. 

* * *

“I made you something.” Hyunjin shakes a clear tupperware container at him. He recognizes it from Felix’s set. 

“No you didn’t,” Changbin scoffs. Hyunjin  _ isn’t  _ as useless as he is in the kitchen. Makes pretty good scrambled eggs on the Saturdays that he doesn’t sleep until afternoon, or isn’t too hungover to sit upright. “Felix did.” Nevertheless, Changbin reaches for the container. 

“I helped.” Hyunjin pulls back, keeping the container out of reach. “The special ingredient? You know,  _ love?  _ You wouldn’t because you’re a heartless bastard. That’s what I contributed.” But when he teases Changbin, the faux venom with which Hyunjin usually teases him is diluted with uncertainty. His voice waivers, like he feels like each word is a misstep. “And the jam filling. I made that exactly how Felix and the recipe card told me to.” 

“Can I have some of you love then?” Changbin asks. “In my mouth?” 

Hyunjin passes off the container with a huff and flops down onto the bed next to him. 

“These are really good,” Changbin says with his mouth full of dessert.

“Seriously? You’re eating in bed?” 

Changbin shrugs and brushes crumbs off of his dark blue bedspread. “You drank 2/3rds of a bottle of chardonnay in the bath last night.” 

“That’s different.” 

“Yeah, I might have a functioning liver at thirty.” Changbin quickly crams another cookie in his mouth. He’s about two thirds of the way in before he realizes that he’s defensive eating right now. Shoveling in food before he can really taste it to do something to fill in the space between when he and Hyunjin talk. 

Which like isn’t fair. He was gonna mow through half the container lying here , in bed with Hyunjin, but he wants to  _ savor it _ . “Sometimes I think you wanna fatten me up.” 

“Hm,” Hyunjin reaches backwards haphazardly and paws at his stomach. “I miss your tum.” 

Hyunjin touches him a dozens of times a day, both purposeful and accidental. This touch acts as one and masquerades as another. 

And fuck if Changbin knows which is which. 

“My dad is gonna be around this weekend. So we gotta act a little less gay.” 

“So I shouldn’t...try to fuck him?” 

  
  


* * *

Hyunjin stares into the distance, watching the five toes on his feet blossom outward to seven, then eight, and then split into two as he crosses his eyes. Then, he shoves both feet back together as he uncrosses them, simply staring at his foot pressed against clean white tile. 

He really, really, really loves the Seo’s bathtub.The whole house is like something you’d see in the movies, but the tub is just  _ really  _ something. Sloped back, crisp white enamel pristine silver fixtures, with brass claw feet. 

He stopped at Lush on his way home just to pick up a bath bomb. The air is scented with rosemary, and herbs, and the earthy scent of himaleyan salts. Even though he really wanted the pink one that smelled like bubble gum, he got this one because he knew that it would be way better for his skin. 

The water is tepid, his fingers pruny. He should get out, but the very idea of lifting his own body upward right now seems  _ so  _ taxing. 

A knock at the door interrupts this particular line of thought, and makes Hyunjin sink lower in the water to cover himself. 

“Hey, let me in, I need to take a piss.” 

“There are three bathrooms in this house Changbin.” 

“I’m just kidding. Can I come in?” 

He’s only been here for a few weeks, so it’s hard to say that it’s a thing, but he always comes and sits with his back to the tub and talks to him while Hyunjin bathes. Especially after days like today. “Sure.” 

Changbin enters the room walking with the confidant swagger he uses at open mic nights and on dance floors. Approaching the tub, Changbin diverts his eyes, looking intently at the drying rack in the bathroom covered with his clothes as if he just remembered Hyunjin was naked. 

“Did you bring me coffee?” Hyunjin asks at the sight of thin, caramel colored twin cans in Changbin’s hand. 

“No,” Changbin responds, approaching the tub. 

Icy cold travels in a jolt down his back as Changbin drags the can across his damp skin. 

“Hey!” 

Only then does Changbin relinquish the drink and sit with his back pressed against the enamel. “What’s wrong? you’ve been in here for like a thousand hours.” 

Hyunjin lets a sigh escape that’s been trapped in the space between his lungs and his throat for far too long.

“Hyunjin, my mom told me to make sure you didn’t like...kill yourself.” 

“Jeeze.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure she saw it in a drama recently or something...”

“No, even though your dad is gone again, the vibe is just fucking off.” 

There’s silence between them for a moment. Nothing really happened, but his arrival sent the family into chaos. He may be the only reason Hyunjin actively wants to stop overstaying his welcome at the Seos’ 

“Seriously though. What’s wrong?” 

Hyunjin pops the tab on the can, cold seeping into all of the wrinkles and crevices in his pruney fingers and making him shiver. The sweet taste of milk and condensed coffee coats his tongue, and makes talking about his problems, just a little bit easier. “Oh, its the same old thing. I really need a new job. Which, I really can’t do if I’m like, right about to move into a bigger, more expensive place.” 

“What if I just came in and bought that giant fat baby sculpture? Wouldn’t that just pay your commission for a month or so, and you could look for something new?” 

“Yeah, and you’d have to live with the giant fat baby sculpture. I could never do that to you.”

“I’d gift it to you as a housewarming present.” 

Hyunjin scoffs at the idea. “Like I don’t know. It’s my job to sell pretty and expensive things. I like doing that. I’m fine with that.” 

“I like it when you bring home the leftover wedges of brie and camembert from gallery showings.” 

“You literally just offered to buy a ten million won piece of art, and also lose your mind over left over, picked at cheese. You see how fucked up that is?” Hyunjin teases. “But I really hate when people treat me like I’m one of those pretty and expensive things.” Hyunjin leans forward, splashing water over the side. “You know?” 

“Is it the owner again?” Changbin asks. 

“No. It’s a featured artist, so I have to put up with him for a few weeks longer.” Hyunjin decides that maybe it would be best to actually wash himself after almost an hour in the bath. So he chases his loufa around the water, snapping it up with long fingers. He scrubs his arms with sugar scrub, but its a half hearted effort.

“Gross.” 

“I’d ask you to come to the next showing and stand around and look menacing, but I think all you’d do is eat all my roquefort.” 

“I’m a talented guy Hyunjin. I can do both.” 

Hyunjin rinses his arms, washes his face, and looks at all the other products lined around the tub that he’s  _ supposed  _ to use to keep his skin from getting oily. “I really don’t want to go out tonight for their birthdays. Does that make me horrible?” 

“It’s weird. Do you have a fever?” Changbin leans up to press the back of his hand to Hyunjin’s forehead. 

“I need to wash my hair, but it feels like my arms weigh a thousand pounds.” 

He expects a joke about how histrionic he is. What he gets instead is, “I’ll do it.” And then he adds, almost as an afterthought, “if you wanted.” 

Hyunjin studies Changbin carefully now. Where he usually sits with his back against the tub facing straight forward, his head is cocked to the side, looking at him now. In that look is a question, and when Hyunjin looks back at him he asks another question instead of giving him an answer. 

It’s only in that moment that he truly feels naked. 

“Sure.” 

It’s a brief and welcome reprieve when Hyunjin sinks into the tepid water, submerging himself to get his hair wet. When he rises out of the water, he feels seen. Like clouded, milky water wasn’t hiding most of his body from Changbin. 

Changbin buries his fingers in his wet matted hair, spreading shampoo across his scalp and through his long hair. 

“God, how do you even keep your hair this nice even when it's dyed?” 

“Conditioner?” Hyunjin responds. Changbin’s back to his natural black hair...Well close enough to it. The places that they’d bleached and lightened months ago linger at the ends. Once a month or so he smoothes out the patchy discolored spots with a home dye kit. 

And he kind of loves that. Changbin will drop a few million won without batting an eye, but he’s always right there with him with eight thousand won home hair dye. 

“I condition my hair too!” Changbin insists. “But my hair breaks anyway.” 

“Hm,” Hyunjin could try to say something else. Instead, he focuses on the sensation of Changbin massaging his scalp. Fingertips glide across the often forgotten patch of skin between his hairline and the shell of his ear and it makes him feel warm. Fingertips squeeze the forbidden muscle at the base of his neck, thumb circling the juncture where neck meets shoulder. 

Hyunjin feels mortified when a moan slips from his mouth, but he just can’t help it. He’s been standing on his feet for  _ so long  _ today. Holding a smile for  _ so long  _ today. Changbin’s touch only scratches at the surface of the tension that rests there. 

It’s not lost on him, the sharp sound of Changbin inhaling when he makes that noise. The feeling of his fingertips tightening, and subsequently relaxing against his skin as he repeats the motion, rubbing his neck, fingertips gliding atop of soap bubbles. 

Tension dissipates from Hyunjin’s muscle with each swipe of Changbin’s fingers. 

“That feels really nice.” 

“I like playing with your hair.” 

All too soon, it’s over. Changbin, because he wants to complete the task, or because he is just aware as Hyunjin of how tenuous this really is, turns the faucet on. Grabbing the shower head, attached to a long hose, he instructs Hyunjin, “lean forward?” 

Hyunjin does as he’s told, letting Changbin comb through his hair with his fingers, making sure that all the suds are rinsed clean. The suds empty into the tepid water, making it turn dirtied gray. 

Changbin repeats these motions once more with conditioner, ensuring that his hair stays silky, soft, and unbroken. 

“Changbin?” Hyunjin says this with his hair full of strawberries and goatmilk scented conditioner. Hyunjin says this while he’s got his head reclined against the sloped back of the tub, looking up into his friend’s intense almond colored eyes. Hyunjin says this years too late, and not a moment too soon. “I kinda wanna kiss you.”

“I kinda want you to kiss me.” 

It's awkward, and a little uncomfortable, when he raises his long arms out of the water. Pressing damp palms to the back of Changbin’s shirt he pushes him forward into a kiss. 

It’s not the first time that they’ve kissed. It’s not the tenth time that they’ve kissed. Maybe not even the hundredth time that they’ve kissed, but it still feels brand new. 

Changbin feels tense against him as if, even though he knew what Hyunjin was suggesting, it still takes him off guard. He softens slowly, picks up the urgency and edges out most of Hyunjin’s uncertainty. 

When Changbin pulls back, all he can say is, “wow.” 

“Yeah,” Changbin smiles sheepishly and looks away as if  _ once again  _ he just realized that he was hovering over his best friend, naked in a bath tub. “We should finish getting ready right? Seungmin hates it when we’re late.” 

* * *

_ The Lonely Planet: Present Day _

“Do you think…” Hyunjin steps into his space now, trying to leverage his height to get him to pull away. 

Changbin’s cherry burnished boots feel melted into the floor..

“Do you think you could beat a lie detector?” 

“Me?” His cheeks become hot coals on his face as he speaks. They haven’t  _ talked  _ about it. Hyunjin kissed him and then he went about his routine trying to figure out which boots to cram his lifts into. “I’m a good boy Hyunjin, and I truly believe,” That’s it. That’s the exact moment he pits out his shirt. He’s been running from the truth for fucking years. He’s still not ready to face it, but its still second nature to doubledown. “Honesty is the best policy.” 

He sounds so stupid right now, and he  _ knows  _ that he sounds stupid. Knows that he’s on the cusp of making an ass of himself. 

“You morons need to eat something.” Somi put out one of the many, endless plates of pan fried zucchini that they always order, here, in front of them. Changbin,wonders if that’s weird for her, to watch her ex fiance doing this. It doesn’t stop him from shoveling fried zucchini into his mouth all the while. 

“Okay then, be honest Changbin.” 

“Okay,” he says with a nearly full mouth. He reaches for his drink. His soju was replaced with ice water. Unfair. 

“What the hell are we doing?” 

Changbin swallows thickly. What he  _ wants  _ to do is shovel more fried food into his mouth to deflect for just a little longer. Over and over until he’s stuffed full, but still truth starved. He wants to shout, at the top of his lungs, all his feelings for Hyunjin: the good and the bad. Honestly. “I dunno, but I like it.” It’s hard to look at Hyunjin; the place he wants to hide is with his face buried in the crook of Hyunjin’s shoulder. Honestly. “I like you staying at my place. I like hearing about your day, even if it’s shitty. I like bothering you when you’re in the bath. I liked--”   


“I liked it too.” Hyunjin interrupts. “So same question. What are we doing?” And now it’s Hyunjin’s turn to double down, even when the particular line of questioning is destructive. 

“I’m fucking scared Hyunjin.” Honestly. “I like you so much. I like you so much that it makes me want to do crazy things.” Changbin touches the place where his undercut meets his longer hair. He scratches his scalp here, because it’s easier to divert his nervous energy in that way. “Like do you even know how sexy you are? You’re a sweaty, vomiting mess, and I still want you so bad.”

Hyunjin’s expression is pinched between strong emotions, negative and positive. 

Changbin keeps talking, because if he plugs the leak, he’s never gonna open up again. “Like I’ve thought about it. If I knew, if I knew it could work, and that I wouldn’t leave my best friend if shit went bad, I’d do anything. 

“Same,” Hyunjin threads his fingers through his damp hair, messing the already sloppy pony tail up even more. Loose strands fall in his face. “Like, if being with you meant never getting to sit on cock ever again, I’d probably do it.” 

Yeah, it’s still unfair how good he looks. 

“Seriously? You really like sitting on cock.” Changbin flashes him a smile that says that he  _ knows  _ that it’s deeper than that. 

“Changbin, I am  _ trying  _ to pour my heart and soul out to you, and this is how you respond?”  __

“I know,” Changbin laughs. “I know.“

“Dick.” Hyunjin huffs. “I don’t think we’re ever gonna know for sure. Changbin. It just seems like every time we get close, like we’re about to do something about it, one or both of us does something really stupid to push the other away. We’ve tried literally everything else. What if we actually tried…” 

“Me and you?” 

* * *

All right. So he’s gonna be real gay for a minute. 

Really gay. 

How could he not though, with the sun streaming into the window just right? With reflection shining onto Hyunjin’s hair, and his cheeks? It’s the kind of thing that poems are made of. 

Thank god he’s just a wanna be rapper in Seoul. Maybe that’s enough to save him from all that bullshit. 

Hyunjin’s wearing an eye mask, the kind that you put in the freezer. At some point in the night, it slid down his face, so it only properly covers one eye. His lips are parted in the kind of way that only Hyunjin can pull off, which is to say he makes a very unsexy situation quite sexy. 

And maybe for the first time ever he’s awake before Hyunjin, and it’s kind of cool to wake up next to your best friend. 

Hyunjin stits up quickly, asleep and awake in unknown proportions, and gasps. He tears the face mask away from his face, and throws it so hard that it hits the wall with a  _ thwack.  _

“Samuel L. Jackson. Art supplies. Goddamnit Minho,” he’s panting. 

Changbin reaches over and touches his shoulder. “Hey.” 

“Hey.” And after a few quick breath’s Hyunjin’s ratio slides from more asleep than awake to more awake than asleep. Laying back on his pillow, he stares up at the ceiling. “Oh my god. You would not believe the dream I was having.” 

“I’m not sure I  _ want  _ to know about the dream you were having.” 

They lay there like that for a moment, looking deep into one another’s eyes, speaking nothing and saying everything. His hand feels heavy when he reaches up to tuck the strand of blonde hair away from Hyunjin’s face behind his ear. 

“I had a good dream too. Before that one.” 

“Yeah?” 

“In the bathtub. You were washing my hair again. Then I put on. I put on you know, that big green fur coat in the window of Minho’s shop?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I put that on. Then you braided my hair.”

“Sounds nice.” 

“Sounds a little too PG.” 

Hyunjin’s hand too feels heavy when it clamps over Changbin’s and keeps his hand there, pressed against his cheek. His smile fills out his face and the cheek beneath Changbin’s palm. He says it with the pounding of his heart, his sweat slicked palms, and every memory of just how close they’ve gotten in the past. Latin class, and drunk makeouts. The fact that it’s happening now of all times, when they’re sober, speaks volumes in a language in which neither of them are fluent.

Something’s changed, and he isn’t sure when or how. No, maybe the reason that he cannot pin anything down is because that change is happening right now, right this very moment, and somehow that makes it all even more frightening. 

“You meant it last night?” 

“Every single soju soaked word.” 

Hyunjin closes his eyes, making secret the little line just below his lower lid. 

There’s a part of Changbin that wants to shut it all down. Say something in his stupid baby voice, or complain that Hyunjin has morning breath, but it all dries up on his tongue. 

And when they’re frozen in time like that for too long, Hyunjin huffs impatiently and wraps his arm around his middle drawing him closer. 

And he’s so close to Hyunjin’s warm expression that he has no choice but to close his eyes and hide. 

So he can’t be certain if it's himself, or if it’s Hyunjin that finally closes the scant millimeters between them. All he knows is that the tickle of Hyunjin’s breath becomes amplified and his lips are so much fuller when he’s not shrouded from him under filters of alcohol, fear, and denial. 

Hyunjin’s skin burns beneath his touch. Even though he’s wrapped his arms around Hyunjin’s middle thousands of times, he experiences it again for the very first time. He wants close to become closer. He’ll let close become closer, and he thinks Hyunjin will too. 

His want for Hyunjin quickly becomes a need, and so it feels like he’s being deprived when Hyunjin breaks the kiss. A sharp gasp escapes Changbins throat. 

Hyunjin leans in so close to him, like he’s going in for another kiss. Forehead pressed to forehead, all he can see are Hyunjin’s blown wide eyes. “Have we ever kissed sober before? I mean, before yesterday?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

They kiss again. Needy and furious, it feels like they’re burning through lost time. Tongues against lips, and tongues and the roofs of mouths. This one doesn’t feel so unlike all the drunken, haphazard kisses they’ve shared in the past. 

“It’s weird,” Hyunjin laughs.

“It’s weird?” Changbin’s heart stands on the precipice of a very tall cliff. 

“It’s weird that it doesn’t feel weird.” 

“Oh,” 

And with the foreboding feeling that only comes when waiting for the other shoe to drop, they kiss each other once more. Starting again before one even properly ended. Slowing down, and picking up the pace. Hands scorch paths across whatever swaths of skin they have access to while laying in bed, neither one of them certain how far the other is willing to go. 

Changbin’s hands drift to Hyunjin’s hips, and he touches bare skin where he least expects it. “Are you?” 

“Dude, this shirt is basically a nightgown.” 

“You were sleeping next to me half naked this whole time?” 

“You assumed I’d go to bed with my clothes on? A shirt is doing you a favor” 

His fingertips feel magnetically connected to the crest of Hyunjin’s hip. His skin tingles when Hyunjin pries him away. 

It doesn’t quite register what it is that Hyunjin’s trying to do. The feeling of his cock filling out, the heaviness that’s settled in his cock, doesn’t ache with the urgency that he’s so used to. Maybe he’s afraid that there won’t be any afterglow, better hold onto the moment. 

But he lets Hyunjin tug at the waistband of his sweats. ‘Do you want to?” 

“Yeah.” 

He lets Hyunjin tug down his shorts. Then he pushes up the hem on Hyunjin’s shirt. Finally, they’re naked next to each other. 

Hyunjin wears an expression of perplexion and amazement as he wanders his fingers down Changbin’s chest, his arms, the muscle of his thighs leaving burning ember trails in his wake across Changbin’s skin. “Wow.” 

“Okay, but like,” Hyunjin’s a bit more muscular now than when they first met, but he retains a delicate litheness nevertheless. For all the times that they’ve been around one another in various states of undress, he’s never,  _ never  _ gotten to look all that he wanted. 

Changbin wraps one leg around Hyunjin’s, leveraging his weight against him. He pushes Hyunjin onto his back. 

It feels nice, and it feels right, when he interrupts hungry kisses at his neck and clavicle for playful raspberries on his stomach. 

It feels nice, and it feels right when Hyunjin hits him on the arm, “hey!” 

Hand wrapped around their cocks, Changbin almost forgets that he’s supposed to  _ do  _ something other than stare at just how big his friend is. He’s seen it plenty, but he’s never, never had the freedom to touch it. 

Long, and thick, and glistening precum, Changbin wants to choke on it. Wants to jerk his own cock off on it and marvel at the difference in size. Wants to sit on it. Yes, even wants to watch it strain against Hyunjin’s stomach as he fucks him, that’s how badly he’s dickmatized. 

“Binnie,” Hyunjin’s voice sounds so pitchy, so needy. 

So he wraps his hand around both of their cocks and jerks them desperate and uneven. 

“Hey,” Hyunjin’s voice cuts into the sound of their ragged breath, and the constant, rhythmic creak of the bed frame. “Hey. Changbin. Stop. I’m gonna--” 

Changbin listens, kissing Hyunjin’s temple. 

“I wanna do something for you.” Hyunjin closes the distance between them with a kiss. “Where's your lube?” 

“Really?” Is he really gonna have that thing inside of him? Finally?

“You’re always doing so much for me.” 

Changbin leans over the side of his bed and searches for the lube. A condom too. They should use one of those. He hands them off to Hyunjin.

Hyunjin answers the question that burns in the back of his mind, “never have I still ever.” Hyunjin bites his lip in apprehension. “It can’t be that hard.” 

“It kind of has to be.”

“No, you buffoon. I mean--It can’t be that  _ difficult.  _ I mean Jisung does it. _ ”  _

“Seungmin does it.” 

And then both of them say in unison, “Chan does it.” 

Laughter fills the room. 

“You’re always showing me how to do things. Let hyung show you,” and he tries to hide how afraid saying that makes him because...Because he has more experience than Hyunjin, but not much. “Just pretend you’re larping the biggest, burliest top you’ve ever seen in porn.” 

“Ew.” 

“Okay, okay, just--” 

“No,” Hyunjin interrupts. “I don’t care if you are hyung. I’m not listening to you. Now hurry up before I change my mind.” Hyunjin frantically swats at his hip urging him to turn over. 

Changbin does as he’s instructed, laying upon his stomach. That giddy sensation, of finally getting what you’ve thought about for so long, catches in his throat when Hyunjin drags his lube coated fingers across his hole. That awestruck sensation of disbelief and celebration fans out across his chest and his cheeks with a glowing red blush when Hyunjin pushes his fingers inside. 

* * *

“Holy shit,” Changbin’s face is pinched with discomfort. It’s never a good feeling to see someone you love very much in pain, but in that moment, Hyunjin feels...vindicated. Like all these years of never sticking his dick into anything was altruistic. He protected size queens, even proud and self proclaimed ones like Changbin, from themselves. “You’re like really, really big.” 

Hyunjin simply nods at Changbin. Biting his lip, trying to focus so hard on not busting a nut when Changbin is vice tight around him. Watching in rapt fascination as Changbin writhes on the sheets below him in discomfort and want. Disbelief, because there's no  _ way _ he’s done that. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I will be.” As if he has to prove himself, Changbin rocks back against his cock. “How is it for you?” 

It feels really, really good. So Hyunjin isn’t really thinking about his response when he says, “fine.” 

“Just fine?” 

“Good,” Hyunjin responds quickly to over compensate. “Really good.” Then, when he looks down at Changbin he sees the smug expression that has ignited his own ire a thousand or more times. Hyunjin responds appropriately. “I mean, I like it more than onions.” 

“What?” 

Hyunjin trusts himself enough to move now. Shallow at first, he gets used to the molten sensation of Changbin around him. “And it’s way better than carrots.” Interrupts himself to bite Changbin’s shoulder. More than eggplant. Beets. Spinach.” 

“I’m so glad,” Changbin meets him thrust for thrust. Even when Hyunjin fucks deeper they keep the pace slow. “I’m so fucking glad you like me more than salad.” 

And even though he’s never done this before, has no reference point beyond his own experiences, he knows. Changbin’s smile, and the soft noises that he makes let him know, that he’s doing this right. 

Cause Changbin cums against the sheets. He doesn’t even have to touch him. 

Only then is he reunited with the aggressive, overly forward Changbin that fooled him so many years ago. Changbin twists around, pushing him off, and climbs back on top. Before he even really understands what’s happening, the condom slides off of his cock with a  _ snap.  _ Two fingers are buried deep inside of him and he’s coming across his stomach. 

Changbin looks at him with sweet half-lidded eyes and dangerous smirk. Like he knows that he’s doing it right too. 

* * *

Seoul is so unfathomably huge. 

Every day, Hyunjin passes by places that he wants to try. There’s a new dumpling restaurant that he sees every day from the train, and there’s always a line. There's this beef noodle soup place by Changbin’s place that always smells great, but they’ve never been inside. Hell there’s a taqueria over by his house, and even though he’s pretty sure he’d hate it, he’d try it just for Chagbin. But when it comes down to it there’s really only two places to get something to eat in Seoul. There’s the Bungeoppang stand by his hanok that’s open til something crazy like four in the morning. Then there’s hot pot. 

They’re back again for the second time in just as many weeks. 

Changbin’s putting on his best gentleman act, ordering them both water. 

Hyunjin stifles a rude laugh when Somi asks, “ah, nothing to drink today beef shank?”

But then Changbin fucking loses it when the waiter turns to Hyunjin and says, “you’re just as bad noodle boy.” 

“She’s so rude,” Hyunjin pouts, and that only makes Changbin laugh more. “What?” Hyunjin’s brow twitches in irritation that Changbin laughs at him. “We spend a lot of money here, she shouldn’t be so forward.” 

“She’s your friend!” Changbin says. “You not only disappointed her sexually, but you also made her listen to us talking about how we’d never sit on cock ever again if we could be together.” As if he hasn’t wounded Hyunjin enough _, “a_ nd she’s listened to more horrible blow job stories in the last few years than anyone should.” 

“If the tray isn’t loaded, we’re boycotting,” Hyunjin insists. 

“Okay, and where else in the city are we gonna go? All eight of us, plus whoever else we decide to drag down with us? And yell about cock?” 

So they squabble back and forth like that for a while. Changbin drops almost half the tray of meat and Hyunjin “breaks up” with him over it. 

“You’re being so obnoxious tonight Binnie,” Hyunjin hisses at him through gritted teeth. 

“And you’re being difficult, Jinnie,” Changbin beams as he says it, touching the toe of his shoe to Hyunjin’s ankle under the table. 

“I have a question.” It’s been on his mind a lot the past few days. Sure, he’s moved into his new apartment, so he isn’t living with Changbin anymore. They have sex now, which they didn’t before, but..”Is anything really different?” 

With the burner turned on, and the broth starting to boil, the temperature in the booth rise from comfortable to warm. Hyunjin’s cheeks blossom into a shade of blush pink. Soon he’ll be flushed, and then he’ll start leaking like a rusted faucet. He’ll stay that way until they leave the restaurant and the crisp autumn air cools him down. 

It makes him flush warmer when he realizes that Changbin will look at him fondly regardless of what stage he’s in, whether it’s flushed and pretty or damp and oozing. 

“Permission.” Changbin supplies.“Permission to think that you look really, really good tonight. Permission to think that you should definitely wear those little hair clips more often.” 

He’s weaved them into the line of the braid Changbin put into his hair. Changbin said that it makes him seem younger than he already is. 

Hyunjin can tell that he’s being too sentimental as he hangs onto every word that Changbin speaks. His ears burn with embarrassment. He’s smiling at Changbin with a big, dopey grin that monopolizes his expression. 

“Permission for you to listen to me say all this crap.” 

“Permission,” Hyunjin repeats the word, taking Changbin’s hand into his own across the table. Permission goes both ways. He has permission to give Changbin the spare key to his apartment. Permission to stare at his muscles. “I like that a lot.” Permission to speak freely, and not mask his feelings. “Permission to talk about my feelings?” 

“Yeah, I guess if you wanna be like that,” Changbin teases. 

“I don’t know it’s like,” Hyunjin’s mouth hangs open ever so slightly as he thinks of the right thing to say. “Like sometimes I would think about you. Like after Latin class or if we went to the gym together or whatever. And I’d think about like...I don’t know this version of you that probably only existed in my mind for about an hour or so when I first met you. You know, this muscley dude that would leave beard burn between my legs and not call me the next day. And then…” Hyunjin takes a long drink of ice water. Heat envelops his face and makes him turn from pink to red as he speaks. 

“I don't know. Sometimes, I’d think about you the way you like, actually really are. Like when you...Oh my god. Like when you got the toy stuck--” 

“Okay now.” To Changbin, that one’s like a fight club situation. Don’t talk about it. 

“But like, dude, I would think about that. And your stupid little baby noises. And your sweater paws, and all the shit that never got me hard before, with you? All that shit worked, and I'd feel weird about it. It’s permission there too. It’s like--”

“Dude, I can still give you beard burn between your thighs or whatever, it just might take a few days to get there,” he says rubbing at his chin.” 

“You’re just like the worst! Can you please let me be vulnerable to you?” 

So Changbin shuts the fuck up and listens. It’s the least he can do. 

“I think I’m finally giving myself permission to li-lo-be,” Hyunjin stumbles over the right thing to say next, which seems stupid considering how few boundaries there are between them. He settles on, “Like you for you.” 

“I feel the same way.” 

Permission.

For a concrete jungle inhabited primitive tribe of eight people, the world is so unfathomably large. There are rival factions, and unlikely allies. Unexplored lands, and dangerous places. Changbin showed up not only with a spear but a shield to protect him. For a planet inhabited by eight people, the world can get quite lonely. He’s glad that he has Changbin by his side. 


End file.
